00:00We built it pillar by pillar. Earlier we were into academic research then we started off with
00:07molecular diagnostics because my specialty is molecular oncology. I am a molecular trained
00:11molecular oncologist. So therefore I wanted to put the molecular skills you know which will be
00:17useful for the patients. So that is why we started with molecular diagnostics. Later we moved to the
00:22era into molecular prevention where we wanted to use molecular skills for prevention of cancer in
00:28the community. In the community they are asymptomatic people they are not cancer patients they are
00:33asymptomatic people. So we wanted to see how we can use molecular skills to prevent cancer in the
00:38community setting. So then from molecular prevention we moved to precision oncology and precision medicine
00:45where we have started offering NGS based facilities that is next generation sequencing based technology
00:53has been put to use for profiling the tumors of these patients who are presenting with the disease
01:01to our hospital. Now it is a very it is a very technically intense exercise for which we have
01:08state of art platforms. We do both short read and long read sequencing. The long read sequencing is more
01:14into research because this department caters to both research and diagnostics. So that way through
01:21diagnostics we are able to understand the biology of the samples easily and whatever we are able to frame
01:27better questions for our research because of the diagnostics and then we try to answer those questions
01:33through research grants as a part of our academic research programs. So we have the Illumina platform,
01:39we have the GenXS platform, we have the long read for which we use to Oxford Nanopore. So we are trying to see
01:47how precision oncology can be made affordable and accessible to the patients who are coming to this
01:54hospital. So as Dr. Shanta the founder of the institute has had a vision that whatever technology
02:03that we bring in should be available to all. So under that ethos the institute functions with the ethos of
02:10service to all. We do not deny service to anybody who is coming here be it rich or poor. We do not
02:16differentiate between the classes of people. So similarly we want the technology also to reach
02:22all strata of patients. So we have tried to make these assays very accessible and affordable and we
02:28are able to offer it to the patients at a subsidized cost. It is not free, we offer it subsidized.
02:33So because of this exercise we have been able to help the clinicians in their therapeutic decisions,
02:41we have been able to help the clinicians and in improving the disease outcomes and the treatment
02:47responses. So we are doing our bit because if you see it is a cancer is a big problem, it is a
02:53multi-disciplinary problem. It cannot be just solved only by a clinician, you need a team of people,
03:00it has to be a multi-disciplinary team. Earlier it used to be the surgeons and medical oncologists
03:06and radiation oncologists. Now molecular oncologists are also playing an important role in solving this
03:12problem. So we what we do is we are a part of this multi-speciality tumor board where all the disease,
03:19all the reports we discuss, you know to see that based on our assay, if we have found a unique kind
03:25of a mutation, a unique kind of a recommendation, then it becomes multi-disciplinary when we all
03:30discuss and try and give a solution to the problem to the patient. So it has become a multi-disciplinary
03:37management basically and our role comes in from the technical perspective because as technical experts,
03:45we execute these techniques and whatever data we derive is helping the clinicians plus it is also
03:52helping to build the data of cancer of our population. So our population is very diverse, it is very
04:00heterogeneous and diverse. So doing this exercise of genomics, oncogenomics in our patient population,
04:09we are able to understand the genomics of our country, you know and we want to catalog all that
04:16and we are in a way we have the follow-up information, we have the response information.
04:22So we will be able to collate what we derived genomically with the treatment and response
04:27and follow-up. So we are able to get that complete picture together. So this will be the advantage of
04:32of doing these things in a center like this and definitely NGS is the way to go forward. It will be like
04:40one technique which will answer all the questions where with just one sample, if you get a sample
04:46then with this one particular technique, you are able to give a kind of a perfect solution to the
04:51clinician. So this is where we are heading and during covid times, we understood the potential of
04:56molecular testing where RT-PCR was so widely used. Every single lab was equipped, was trained to the
05:05to do the you know RT-PCR to tackle covid. Like this, this particular technology will also come in
05:11all the labs, people will be able to use it more extensively, people will be able to profile the
05:16tumors. Plus this technology also tells you because it is a cancer is a DNA related problem and we are
05:22looking at the DNA in total. So that gives you a lot of answers, a lot of answers to why this is
05:29happening and how this can be tackled. So that way now we are advancing every day and every day the
05:35technology is advancing. So it's important for us to put this to use to help in alleviation of this
05:41disease. We have tested close to 1000 patients with NGS, but other than that, if you look at the battery
05:48of tests that we have done, we do nearly about 80 to 85 percent of molecular diagnostics of the hospital.
05:54We cater to more than about 2000-3000 patients in a year in different tests.
Comments