On December 10, 2020, Indiana University School of Medicine’s Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering (ICRME) and the IU India Gateway hosted an online workshop on Regenerative Medicine and Nanotechnology in partnership with the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that showcased the latest regenerative medicine technologies and how these could positively impact patient treatment in India.
Randeep Guleria PhD, Director of AIIMS, and Chandan Sen PhD, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering, gave the keynote talk to an audience of over 100 researchers and students from over fifty higher education and research institutes across India. The program included presentations on the nanobiotechnology and regenerative medicine interface by Amit Dinda, MD Emeritus Scientist, ICMRE, and tissue engineering by Sujata Mohanty, PhD Professor Stem Cell Facility, AIIMS. A poster competition in which five early-career scientists were invited to present their research work and get feedback from an expert panel and a session dedicated to research and careers in the field were also part of the program.
Speaking after the event, Sen said, “Beyond medical drugs and devices, the future of affordable health care relies on our ability to unlock the curing and healing powers of our own body. In addition, the intersection of engineering, technology, and medicine will provide next-generation healthcare solutions. Taken together, these represent the emergent discipline of Regenerative Medicine. Regenerative Medicine is on its way to emerge as a new cornerstone of affordable and scalable healthcare with a business model strikingly different from what we have today. Simply put, the body itself becomes your source of medicine. Technologies such as in vivo tissue reprogramming can be inexpensive and dispensed at remote locations with little infrastructure.”
“Drawing talented students to this new future of medicine is a critically important step as we plan for this exciting future. The workshop was highly effective in showcasing the extraordinary training opportunities at AIIMS and Indiana University, including our recently launched Regenerative Medicine and Technologies PhD program, and has initiated new scientific collaborations, including those with both public and private sectors in India. Co-operation with AIIMS and our center is co-developing the Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT) technology for tissue reprogramming for human applications with funding from the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). We are also co-developing a new Regenerative Medicine curriculum for Presidency University, Kolkata.”