The growing technological prowess of India indicates there is a greater need for Indo-US collaboration in areas of biomedical research like cancer,Open Health Systems Laboratory (OHSL), USA, director Anil Srivastava, said here on Tuesday.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the three-day international symposium on ‘Accelerating Biology’ organised by C-DAC hereon Tuesday, Srivastava said, "Work is already being done. Under the cancer Biomedical Grid (caBIG) initiative of the National Institute of Health, USA, it has been proposed to set up a Bioinformatics Resources and Applications Facility (BRAF), similar to the one in the Bioinformatics team of C-DAC, Pune.

This will allow the exchange of research data and personnel across both the countries,” Srivastava said. The US organisation will use C-DAC's supercomputing grid for advanced research in finding new cancer drugs.

C-DAC director-general Rajan T Joseph pointed out that the dual capability of C-DAC in terms of in-depth knowledge of genome analysis and molecular modelling, as well as high performance computing puts the organisation in a very advantageous position.

Group Coordinator and Head - Bioinformatics, C-DAC, Rajendra Joshi, said, “Bioinformatics research is still at a very nascent stage in the country. But its importance can never be overemphasised in India where its contributions to drug research and genomic studies can revolutionise the way we visualise life sciences."