Piramal Enterprises Ltd (PEL) and Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) today announced their collaboration to enable development of tools for better understanding of the disease and to predict responses to various treatments for cancer patients.
The new alliance between the two organisations will focus on the development of pre-clinical cancer models to enhance the understanding of disease biology, treatment response/resistance and biomarkers as they relate to diagnosis, prognosis and response to drugs, a company statement said.
These models will be based on tumour tissues from cancer patients and are predicted to have better translational relevance than the currently used human cancer cell line models.
Scientists at TMC and PEL hope to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms through which various drugs work on different cancers. This research could lead to new therapies and predict the medicine best suited to treat an individual cancer patient, the release said.
“Our collaboration with Piramal Enterprises addresses a critical need in cancer care, which is widely accessible and cost effective personalised medicine for cancer patients,” Tata Memorial Centre Director Rajendra Badwe said.
Swati Piramal, Vice Chairperson of Piramal Enterprises said, “We hope that the insights we gain from this alliance will ultimately lead to new treatment options for cancer patients.”