The seminar on Regenerative Medicine, which will be held on October 24 in Chennai as part of the fourth anniversary celebration of the Chennai Centre of Nichi-In Centre for Regenerative Medicine, (NCRM), will throw light on the application of Stem Cell Therapy to cure and prevent various chronic diseases.

Eminent doctors, researchers and scientists from Japan and various parts of India will participate in the seminar and the plenary session preceded by it. Dr Yukio Nakamura (Riken-Bio Centre, Japan) will inaugurate the seminar at 10 AM at Hotel Savera in the city.

In the afternoon, an all India quiz competition on stem cells and regenerative medicine will be held in the same auditorium as part of the function, in which the winners will be given away the prizes by Dr Kazuo Minagawa, consul general of Japan, Chennai.

Dr P Thangaraju, vice-chancellor of Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University and Dr Ryuji Hata, faculty of medicine, Ebime University, Japan will be present as guest of honours.

In the plenary session, Dr. Ryuji Hata will deliver lecture on ‘Therapeutic Potential of stem cells in auditory hair cell repair’, professor Shripad Banavali of Tata Memorial Centre will talk on “Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation status in India, need for research and potential applications,” and Dr Yukio Nakamura will speak about In vitro production of RBCs from ES, iPS & Stem Cell banking in Japan.

Dr. Samuel JK Abraham, the director of the Chennai Centre said the quiz programme named 'The Fujio Cup Quiz' (FCQ) is meant for undergraduate and postgraduate students of life sciences, biology, medicine and biotechnology. The winner will get the prestigious Fujio Cup established in the name of the renowned Japanese physician, Dr Fujio Takayama and a cash award of Rs 10,000. According to him, the questions for the competition will cover the areas on basics and essentials of the history and development of stem cells/regenerative medicine, cell biology, molecular biology, stem cells pre-clinical and clinical applications/cell therapeutics, immunology, cancer biology, developmental biology, ethics, nanotechnology and genetics.

Regarding Stem Cell therapy, Dr Abraham said evidences are available that diseases like myocardial infraction, critical limb ischemia, rheumatoid arthritis, stroke, diabetic disease, Parkinson’s disease etc can be treated with stem cell therapies. Now very comprehensive research and study are going on treating cancer disease with stem cells and the results are found positive.

“Every day cancer cells are born in the body due to cell division and these cancer cells are killed by Natural Killer (NK) cells and T Lymphocytes. When the immune surveillance using these cells is defective, cancer becomes a full blown disease. In NCRM, we get the peripheral blood from the hospitals, isolate and multiply the NK Cells and T Lymphocytes and give it to the hospital for transfusion to the patient intravenously. This Immunotherapy uses patients own cells and we call it as Autologous Immune Enhancement Therapy (AIET). We have treated patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and terminal stage stomach cancer. This treatment has been in clinical application for the past 20 years in Japan,” he said while interacting with Pharmabiz.

He further said NCRM has established a GMP compliant stem cell processing facility in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia which has been certified GMP compliant by the National Pharmaceutical Control Board of the Government of Malaysia.