The Times of India
December 09, 2010
Pune: The sooner we get to the root of cancer, the better we will fight it, said Hemant Darbari, executive director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) here on Wednesday, while announcing the second meet on Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG™) to be held in the city on Thursday and Friday.
Darbari said that despite recent progress in healthcare and medical technology, “we are yet to unravel the complete nature of cancer,which claims millions of victims world-wide. We are proud to associate with researchers, scientists, medical practitioners to provide the final answer to this human dilemma. The second caBIG™ meet seeks to promote the exchange of information, knowledge and know-how towards forging a concerted effort by bringing together academic, service, and industry sectors of the healthcare domain. We stand to benefit from the massive medical expertise of the caBIG™ community and hope to complement it with our in-house research experiences and technological capabilities.”
The caBIG™ is an information network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA, and its activities are supervised by the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB). He said the C-DAC has designed CAM-based tools that could be valuable for drug discovery in the area of cancer research.
The second meet of caBIG™ will provide an avenue for researchers from USA and India to share and discuss their research endeavours and identify areas for collaborative research. Several eminent scientists from the NCI, USA; University of Chicago, USA; Indiana University School of Medicine, USA; Cancer Institute (WIA), Chennai; Tata Consultancy Services, New Delhi and Biomantra,New Delhi along with scientists from C-DAC will deliver talks on their areas of expertise and share their research with their counterparts.
The first meet on Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid: Cooperation for Cancer Research was held in February 2009 in Pune, followed with caBIG™ conferences in July 2009 and September 2010. TNN