The two-day International Workshop on “Electro-Chemotherapy for effective treatment of Cancer” was inaugurated in Chennai on July 27. About 500 delegates, including seven experts from abroad were attending the workshop, being organised by the B S Abdur Rahman University in association with the US-based Purdue University and Sri Ramachandra University (SRU).
This was the first of its kind workshop being organised to highlight an alternative therapy for treatment of cancer, Abdur Rahman University Vice-Chancellor Dr P Kanniappan said. Inaugurating the seminar, SRU University Vice-Chancellor Dr S Rangaswami said there has been disturbing figures about the increase in the rate of cancer patients.
Even the mortality rate due to cancer has been increasing, he noted. He said in the earlier years Tuberculosis remained at the top of the metaphor of illness. “Now it is cancer after the HIV, for which AV drugs are made available for treatment and also more awareness has been created,” Dr Rangaswmai said.
Stating that Cancer continues to instil fear in the minds of the people, he said it was the emperor of all maladies and there was need to remove this fear by going into the
biography of illness for proper treatment.
In this context, he said Electro-Chemo-Therapy was one of the possible alternative treatment for cancer. His research was going on in this regard. Dr Rangaswami said electroporation technique improves the efficiency of drug delivery.
The principal mechanism of electro chemotherapy was the electroporation of cells in tumours, which increases drug effectiveness by enabling the drug to reach the intracellular
targets. He said electroporation based cancer treatment process was undergoing intensive investigation in the field of drug delivery and gene therapy.
While the first day’s proceedings were conducted at Abdur Rahman University, the second day’s deliberations were held at SRU the next day.