Team:IIT-Madras/Human Practices
INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
For achieving our goals with respect to integrated human practices, we collaborated with the stakeholders of our project- including NGOs, organisations, environmental/ biodiversity conservationists, medical professionals, and government officials from all parts of our country. All these collaborations have been enumerated below under the relevant headings:
Dr. Vijay Vardhan Manchala, DEEDS:
Dr. Uma Ramachandran, CARESS:
Mr. Shashank Kadam, Range Forest Officer, Dist.Raigad, Maharashtra
- N.nimmoniana is a shrub found in the western ghats region which includes some districts of Maharashtra. This plant is called Ghanera or Narkya in Marathi, recognized by a foul smell and found in Sahyadri range.
- The government became aware of the threat to N.nimmoniana after a few local people in the Western Ghats noticed large-scale cutting of these plants.
- It was brought to the notice of the state government and the reason for the rampant felling of this plant was unravelled to be its high demand in Japan for the production of Camptothecin.
- The plant was included in the list of trees protected by The Maharashtra Felling of Trees Regulation Act 1964 in 2008. At present, permission from the state government is necessary to cut the plant.
Dr. Ganapathy Ramanan, Oncologist, Apollo Specialty Hospital and Kumaran’s Hospitals Pvt. Ltd.:
- Camptothecin is not directly used for treatment. There are two camptothecin-derived drugs that are available in the market as of today- Irinotecan and Topotecan.
- Irinotecan is a narrow bandwidth drug used for the treatment of advanced-stage colorectal cancer. It is manufactured by Pfizer in India.
- Topotecan is used in minuscule amounts in treatment for relapsed ovarian cancer.
- Eco-friendly ways of drug production will be appreciated by oncologists as long as the cost factor is taken into consideration.
“This will allow for industrial production of the drug while also avoiding the need to fell plants for its production. This newly synthesized cancer drug can have potentially favorable effects on production costs.”
"DHANYA EDUCATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY (DEEDS)" is an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, India. DEEDS is working to empower the underprivileged children, youth and women from the marginalised sections through relevant education and training. Under this umbrella, they work specifically to address women empowerment, gender equality, and healthcare with special focus on women and children. Drawing on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s philosophy and his own experiences as a child belonging to the marginalised community, Dr. Vijay Vardhan Manchala founded this NGO with a few like-minded friends.
Given his proven track record in improving healthcare access for the poor and marginalised, we contacted him and this is what he had to say about our project topic:
“The iGEM-IIT Madras team’s research proposal is on Nothapodytes nimmoniana, an endemic plant in the Western ghats producing a drug called Camptothecin whose derivatives are used to treat colorectal cancer. However, due to over-harvesting for medicinal purposes, N. nimmoniana is now endangered in several parts of the Ghats. They are engineering an endophytic fungus, Fusarium solani, that lives within the plant to produce Camptothecin. This will allow for industrial production of the drug while also avoiding the need to fell plants for its production. This newly synthesized cancer drug can have potentially favorable effects on production costs. Adoption of a proper research methodology can streamline the research structure and improve the research design. This research can describe the applications and limitations of large scale production of anti-cancer compounds using biotechnological means.
Lastly, they should focus the future economical and eco-friendly strategies for obtaining anti-cancer compounds using biotechnology. DEEDS Organisation extends them support in line with the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development; all the nations and WHO have made commitments to global cancer control such as the 2013–2020 WHO Global Action Plan on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases and most importantly the 2017 World Health Assembly (WHA) Resolution on Cancer prevention and control within an integrated approach. The guiding principle of these WHO and UN documents is that health is a basic human right, and in order to respect that right, health services need to be provided through a universal health coverage system that leaves no one behind. We congratulate and wish all the good luck to the team for initiating the greater cause and in achieving it.”
“...reaching out and communicating with multiple stakeholders and learning about their perspectives and views, for instance, traditional knowledge from the local tribes, etc. will help in promoting overall conservation and biodiversity.”
CARESS (Centre for Action Research on Environment Science and Society) is a foundation dedicated to the memory of Shri Ranjit Singh Hoon (2/2/1923 – 7/5/1998) by his family and friends and their mission is to help conserve the ecological biodiversity and cultural diversity found in coastal (Coral Reefs & Mangroves) and Himalayan environments for future generations. Dr Vineeta Hoon is the founder of CARESS who is an expert in cultural geography. The impetus to start this foundation stemmed from the rapid deterioration of natural ecosystems, alienation of indigenous people from their habitats, and loss of biological diversity and human values as witnessed by mankind over the years.
We had the opportunity to run our project topic by Dr. Uma Ramachandran, a trustee of CARESS. Dr Uma was very positive about our work and the impact of our project. She was of the opinion that our project could have a novel environment impact on the conservation of the endangered species Nothapodytes nimmoniana. She has asked us to explore a range of stakeholders that our project will impact which includes the tribal groups, forest officials, Government Departments and other relevant NGOs/CBOs associated with the Western Ghats besides the anti-cancer drug producers and consumers. She stressed that reaching out and communicating with multiple stakeholders and learning about their perspectives and views, for instance, traditional knowledge from the local tribes, etc. will help in promoting overall conservation and biodiversity. She emphasized that it is of utmost importance to have the complete network - from Lab--to--Field and Field--to--Lab - for achieving the goals of the project. Most often medicinal plants’ metabolic profiling has not been studied scientifically and even traditional knowledge is not documented, causing loss of many of the therapeutic compounds and genetic resources from its habitats. Therefore this project, in her opinion, can add value in terms of sustainable preservation of N.nimmoniana and its compounds for future generations as it will protect this endangered medicinal resource from possible extinction and also provide for the pharmacological demands.
“...the reason for the rampant felling of this plant [N. nimmoniana] was unravelled to be its high demand in Japan for the production of Camptothecin”
We also had the opportunity to interact with and interview Mr. Shashank Kadam, a Forest Officer from the Uran taluka of Raigad district in Maharashtra as we wanted to gain a comprehensive view of the Government’s efforts to conserve Nothapodytes Nimmoniana and we learnt the following from him:
“He gave us an overview of chemotherapy giving us examples of dosage and cost of drugs.”
An oncologist provides the much needed link between drug manufacturers and patients. As an oncologist is well aware of the problems a cancer drug might run across in the production process and in the consumption market, his views were of special importance. Through this interaction, we came across many interesting facts:
True to the adage “necessity is the mother of invention”, we need to understand that science, although practised in the confines of a controlled environment in squalid laboratories, cannot exist in isolation from societal constructs. Society is affected by the economy and our efforts throughout this project have been aligned with the idea propounded by many of our stakeholders: any scientific breakthrough that we come up with should be economical. At the very heart of our project lies the idea of environmental conservation, so the suggestions pertaining to environmental welfare by our stakeholders were already immanent features of our project. Thus, we trained our eyes on the economic aspect of our intended invention as well.
Contact Us
Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras.
Chennai 36, India.
Sponsors
