Background

Due to the commitment of AIMS’ senior clinicians, scientists and faculty towards research, it has been possible to establish a nascent clinical and scientific research centre with support from funding agencies. Realizing the importance of impressive scientific advances and their translation to potential improvement in clinical management, AIMS has made a commitment to establishing a first class research facility. The depth and breadth of patients with different diseases that are available in India makes it strategically possible to do excellent research. Increasingly, research centres have been developed where molecular biology is intimately associated with clinical research and there is synergy between the two.

The establishment of the Institute of Molecular Medicine provides clinicians and the scientists with adequate infrastructure to conduct good quality research and enables fundamental questions to clinical problems to be addressed in detail. Further, because of the expense of doing good quality scientific research, the establishment of such a centre allows pooling of resources and sharing of common facilities between different groups. The future training of doctors and nurses is going to be quite different given the advances that are going to be made in the next twenty years and such a research centre will facilitate in their training. The entire society in the southern region of India shall stand to gain from the proposed research centre. Also, the institute can be developed into a referral centre for other research laboratories within India

Philosophy

An objective of the Institute of Molecular Medicine is to have a balance between scientists who are interested in basic research and applied scientists. This is partly because basic scientists look at the problems in a different way and also enable the development of new technologies to address problems that are relevant in clinical medicine. Clinically oriented scientists bring a different angle to investigate the problem primarily from the knowledge base of clinical issues. Together with the research scientist, clinical scientists can make good contributions to the development of research in a particular area. The institute plans to appoint personnel in the short term who are enthusiastic, well rounded and academically oriented on a tenure track basis to allow for turn over, with the appointments being made permanent at the end of a proper, rigorous scientific review after five to six years.

Director

Dr. T.S. Ganesan has been appointed as Chairman for the institute and joined in October 2005 from his current position as a Professor and Consultant Medical Oncologist at Oxford. He trained at JIPMER, Pondicherry (MBBS & MD) and at St. Bartholomew’s hospital, London in Medical oncology & biological sciences. He has had over 20 years of experience in all aspects of oncology and has been a Principal investigator for 15 years. He has successfully obtained five-year programme grants from 1990-2005 from Cancer Research, UK and headed his own laboratory at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford. His research interests are in cell signalling and cancer genetics and the larger translational aspects of research. He has also clinical research experience and has been Pl of over 20 clinical trials and is on the advisory board of Medical Research Council and other national research councils in the UK and USA. He will be responsible for development and provide academic leadership of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Cancer Institute.

Areas of Research

Scientists from any field of biological research will be encouraged but we specially plan to develop the following areas in the long term.

• Human Genetics - Genetics will be a strong component because of the importance of the field in understanding many common diseases to which patients are predisposed.
• Immunology - Because of its relevance to not only infectious diseases, but also to auto immune disorders and cancer. A good molecular biology focus will also be helpful in terms of relevance to different disciplines in medicine.
• Haemopoesis and Stem Cells - A strong focus on haemopoesis and stem cells would be very helpful in the future because much of the understanding of normal cell biology has come from development of research in haemopoetic systems. Although the focus should be predominantly in mammalian systems in the academic centre, it should not exclude lower organisms such as yeast which are simple to set up and powerful in terms of understanding mammalian biology.
• Bioinformatics - This has become a very important discipline in modern biology, particularly with the completion of the human genome sequence. We plan to invest in this area particularly with people who are from biological backgrounds but may not necessarily know much about software development, but also people from a computer background who may not necessarily know much biology. Such a selection of people would allow questions to be asked and design of appropriate software to analyse the enormous amount of data already available publicly. Such a group of people is also important to help analyse researchers who do microarray or proteomic experiments.
• Oncology - Cancer research is an area, which is to be developed, given the increasing incidence of cancer in India.
• Signal Transduction - Research into this broad area will also be performed given the importance of signal transduction in many diseases

Facilities

The institute is planned to comprise of 30,000 square feet on the first floor of the new hospital block. There is space for at least 20 medium sized groups and 4-5 larger scientific groups. A purpose built animal house facility that extends the current one is being developed on the top floor. The institute will have core facilities to do modern science that will be shared between groups.

The core service is an important part of developing such a facility, particularly with respect to newer technologies which are important for doing modern molecular biology. This includes the general molecular techniques that will comprise sequencing, oligo-nucleotides, micro-array facility and other facilities required to run a modern laboratory, which is to be shared between groups. It will also include the development of a good animal house and the establishment of facility where antibodies can be made. Proteomics is increasingly becoming and important tool and the institute plans to set up a system to collaborate with another centre which has such a facility.