IIT Madras Biotechnology Department Gets New Block With State Of The Art Research Facilities

Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ Biotechnology Department has got new state-of-the-art research facilities with the inauguration of a new Block today.

This block will enable the expansion of Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, and accommodate special facilities such as an Animal House and a Cancer Tissue Bank.

“I’m sure transformational research will come out of these new facilities”, said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR),  

Delivering the inaugural address, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said, “Cancer and cardiovascular diseases are going to be a huge burden in India in the coming years. I’m sure that transformational research in these areas will come out of the new facilities at the Biotechnology Dept, IIT Madras.”

“We need to work on the genomics of diabetes. The data science and IT expertise are a great Plus for IIT Madras. We should start using our computational processing capabilities to match existing data with other data sets. This will help find out many more information about diseases,” said Swaminathan. 

She said that the ICMR will be able to fast-track some of its innovations, research and development by working with institutes like IIT Madras, which have state-of-the-art infrastructure.

 Rahul Mehta, CEO, The Mehta Family Foundation  expressed hope that IIT Madras and India will become great leaders in genetic revolution, which he said will be as disruptive as the innovations of the Silicon Valley.

Speaking about the new building, Prof. D Karunagaran, Head, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, said, "The new building will fulfil our requirements for additional laboratory space. It will also house Indo-German Centre for Sustainability in addition to our laboratories.”

The NCTB,a state-of-the-art non-profit community based tissue bank, is a joint initiative of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt of India, and IIT Madras.

The NCTB is first of its kind facility in India and aiming to provide researchers with high quality of cancer tissues and the patient data in order to facilitate cancer research that will lead to improvements in cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The Animal House is mainly for research in the Medical Biotechnology area broadly and specifically for Cancer, Cardiovascular diseases, HIV, Tuberculosis and Stem Cell Biology in particular.