25 cancer
centres coming to India
Kolkata:
To improve access to healthcare facilities for the rising number of cancer
patients in India, 25 world-class private cancer care centres would be set up
across the country at an investment of Rs 720 crore.
GE
Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, today announced a strategic
partnership with Cancer Treatment Services International (CTSI) to develop
these cancer care centres which will offer latest technology for diagnosing and
treating cancer.
"We
believe a partnership like this one presents a great opportunity to confront India's
cancer challenge head on," John Dineen, president and CEO of GE
Healthcare, said in a statement here.
The
new centres will follow the same standards of care found at the world's top
cancer hospitals delivered at affordable price points, it said.
The
network will be built at an investment of Rs 720 crore over a period of five
years.
The
incidence of cancer is sharply rising in India with a prevalence of 3 million
cases and an addition of 1.23 million new cases being reported every year.
The
mortality rates are very high due to late detection, access and affordability
to care. Estimates suggest every two minutes three patients succumb to this
deadly and costly disease.
CTSI
president and CEO Joe Nicholas said they have built a proven healthcare
delivery model tailored to making the highest quality cancer care accessible
and affordable.
They
aim to elevate the access, affordability and standard of cancer care in India.
GE
and CTSI will configure the network in a hub-and-spoke fashion, with all the
centers linked by a sophisticated IT network to a hub and supported by a
multi-national group of clinicians, and administrators.
The
hub will be a centre of excellence with full diagnostic imaging and treatment
capabilities while the spoke will have the ability to deliver a range of
screening, staging and treatment options, the statement said.
The
first hub center, American Oncology Institute, CTSI's international brand, is
already operational in Hyderabad while the first spoke or remote centre is
being set up in Andhra Pradesh.
Source:
www.zeenewsindia.com/news/health
26.03.2014
An
antibiotic that can be switched on and off with light!
London:
In a breakthrough, scientists have produced an antibiotic whose biological
activity can be controlled with light - opening up new options in treating
bacterial infections as side effects can be minimised by switching.
Thanks
to the robust diarylethene photoswitch, the anti-microbial effect of the
peptide mimetic can be applied in a spatially and temporally specific manner.
Photoswitchable
molecules modify their structure and properties when exposed to light of an
adequate wavelength.
Among
the photoswitches known are diarylethenes.
By
reversible photoisomerization - a reversible light-induced internal relocation
of the molecule - the open form is turned into a closed (inactivated) form.
Professor
Anne S. Ulrich from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, along
with researchers from University of Kiev, produced a photoswitchable peptide
mimetic based on a diarylethene scaffold that can be photoisomerised
reversibly.
The
team then treated a bacterial film with the inactivated antibiotic and exposed
it to light via a mask.
As
a result, the photoswitchable diarylethene was converted from a closed into an
open form.
Due
to the structural modification induced, the entire substance molecule had a
much higher anti-microbial effect.
“In
the future, such photoactivable antibiotics might be used as smart therapeutic
agents against local bacterial infections,” Ulrich explained.
Based
on this strategy, new peptide-based agents against cancer might be feasible as
the newly developed photoactivable building block can also be applied in other
peptide sequences.
The
research was published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Source:
www.zeenewsindia.com/news/health
26.03.2014
The best way
to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others
No comments:
Post a Comment