Cellworks in R&D tie-up with hospital

Cellworks Research India, the research and development (R&D) arm of the California-based Cellworks Group, has entered into a one-year research collaboration with Lifeline Multi-Speciality Hospitals.

The tie-up is in the area of oncology with emphasis on the study of the role of tumor stem cells in cancer pathology and progression.

Lifeline Multi-Speciality Hospital is a tertiary care health destination with 225 beds managed by Lifeline Group of Hospitals which is located in south-east Chennai.

"This collaborative research will elucidate novel biochemical markers to identify disease progression and patient sub-types enabling solutions for personalised medicine. This research project will be based on Cellworks' proprietary iC-PHYS Tumor Cell platform which is Multi-Drug Resistance (MDR) Aware technology," said Dr Anand Kumar, chairman Board of Cellworks Research India.

The research will exploit the prowess of Cellworks technology iC-PHYS, a proprietary in-silico platform, which provides a disease physiology aligned dynamic representation at the bio-molecular abstraction level. The technology platform iC-PHYS Tumor Cell, is MDR Aware and enables virtual prototyping to incorporate drug-resistance factors in the drug discovery process.

"This prototyping minimises efficacy issues due to drug resistance that may show up at the clinical trials stage. Also, the various cancer phenotypes are comprehensively included in this technology platform," he added.

According to Dr J S RajKumar "" founder and chairman, Lifeline Hospitals; "Lifeline Hospitals is pioneering clinical trials using cell-based therapies. One significant need for us to offer differentiated solutions in the area of oncology is to gain a deep knowledge of the sequential cellular level events which take place during cancer progression. We are partnering Cellworks Group Inc to better understand the details of the cellular bio-chemical pathways and proteins involved in the differentiation process."

Cellworks' team with its expertise in Cellular modelling and library of insilico-based proprietary platforms, has been identified to be the optimal partner in this emergent area.