Despite worldwide efforts, cancer remains one of the biggest dangers to human health. The World Health Organization has reported it as the second leading cause of death globally which took 8.8 million lives in the year 2015 alone. But, there are few colleges who are willing to work towards finding a cure for this dangerous disease.

Researchers at Shoolini University are making efforts to find a cure for the disease. One of these is through the use of nanoparticles. Due to the extremely small size, nanoparticles can be utilized to treat cancer as they can easily reach every corner of the tumor and kill the cancer cells when loaded with a drug or possess anti-cancer properties. But while using nanoparticles, it needs to be ensured that the normal cells are not affected. 

In the plant-based cancer therapeutics, herbal extracts are used to kill the cancer cells based on their anti-cancer properties. While the immunotherapeutic approach focuses on enhancing immune cells cancer killing capabilities using various herbal extracts. Immune cells (T-cells and B-cells) are isolated from human blood and the activated immune cells interact with cancer cells and checked for their potential to kill cancer cells under laboratory conditions. Further, anti-cancer properties are also studied using various plant compounds. Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy kill both cancer cells as well as normal cells. But in these approaches, the cancer cells are killed but preserve and enhance the immune cells.

Patents signed by the Shoolini Researchers

The University is currently working on three major areas of cancer-related research namely Nanotechnology, Plant-based immunotherapeutic and Anti-cancer compounds. There are already 12 patents filed in this direction. The names for the same are listed below:

  • The first cancer-related patent from university was filed by Dr. Afroze Alam and Dr. K L Dhar, titled ‘Novel herbal anticancer compound and method of production thereof’.
  • A novel-anticancer compound was patented by Kamna Sharma, Dr. Sameer Sapra and Dr. K L Dhar while another novel anticancer compound isolated from Brugmansia suaveolens and was co-filed by Dr. Neeraj Mahindroo, Sunil Kumar, Aditi Gupta, Dr. Reena V. Saini, and Dr. K L Dhar. 
  • A team comprising of Dr. Reena V. Saini, Dr. Adesh Kumar Saini, Indu Hira, and Dr. Amit Kumar filed a patent on a novel anti-cancer nanocomposite and another nanocomposite which also has therapeutic use as an immuno-stimulator. 
  • Dr. Reena V. Saini, Ravin Sharma, Gourav Chandan, and Anterpreet Chahal have co-filed a patent titled ‘Herbal composition from Stephaniaelegans for breast cancer treatment’. Latest in the list is patent entitled 'Process for the synthesis of nanoparticles possessing anticancer activity from pinus roxburghii bioactive fraction' by Dr. Reena V. Saini, Dr. Aadesh Kumar Saini, and Reena Kumari.
  • Dr. Reena Saini, heading the cancer-related research in the School of Biotechnology, said that she gets motivated to work even harder as deaths caused by cancer are reported every day. She shared that she has a strong feeling that the ultimate cure to cancer will be discovered from the Himalayas only. She hopes for a day when even cancer would have a normal medicine which would help the patients to lead a normal life as they go on with their treatment.