New study at IIT Bombay identifies factors essential for successful adoption of a circular economy model for healthcare waste management in India.

Today cancer has been identified as one of the deadliest diseases that mankind is combating with. This is certainly curable and there exists a variety of treatment owing to the diversity and intensity of the problem.However, most of these treatments yield fruitful results only when the patients are treated at a rather early stage. This leaves with a major challenge of cancer detection which detection, there are several methods and protocols. Some of these include tumor marker method, cell morphology method and cellimaging.

Graphene and its derivatives, graphene oxide (GO), reduced graphene oxide(RGO), and graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have drawn huge attention of researchers worldwide due to their amazing physicochemical properties for biomedical applications.GO and RGO have been used as a drug-carrier and photothermal agents for cancer therapy whereas GQDs have been employed for bioimaging and sensing applications.Conventional cancer therapeutic techniques like chemotherapy cause side effects also, therefore, photothermal therapy for cancer has been explored extensively.

With a particle size of 1 micro meter and grnome size of more than 2 Mbp, which is bigger than many bacteria, giant viruses are changing the way we think about viruses and concept of obligate parasitism.Not too long ago, scientific community believed that viruses cannot be much bigger than 200 nm and in the process missed them completely until an accidental discovery of a giant virus (microbe mimicking virus or mimivirus) in 2003. The rest is history.If one looks at their enigmatic genetic makeup, their abundance and prevalence, it appears

Sickle cell disease is an
inherited blood disorder that affects the red
blood cells (RBCs). A mutation alters the
hemoglobin present inside the RBCs. As a result, normally biconcave and deformable RBCs become stiff and sickle-shaped leading to blockage of blood vessels, recurrent pain, and other related complications. Since there is no cure at the moment, patients have to learn different techniques to manage the disease. Detecting sickle cell disease at an early stage, ideally at birth, helps in better management and control.

With the recent thrust in the Internet-of-Things and wearable electronics, it is expected that all the conventional medical instruments would be highly unobtrusive as well as connected to the internet in near future. However, this imposes several fundamental challenges in their design like low-power consumption, low-noise design, EMI immunity, motion artifact tolerance, low radiation bio-signal communication.

The present scenario in the field of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is grim with no treatments available to halt the progression of the disease. Our group is rigorously working on the development of therapeutics against PD. Using an interdisciplinary approach we have designed smart biomaterials (hydrogels) using small peptides (fragments of proteins) self-assembled into nano-fibres.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurological disorder prevalent mostly in elderly people. This is characterised by progressive loss of brain cells/neurons in specific regions (substantia nigra) of the brain resulting in gradual decline in the sufferer’s motor skills. Mutations in protein, α-synuclein is associated with rare early onset familial forms of PD. The presence of abnormal clumps (aggregates) of the same protein in the neurons surviving in affected regions of PD patients’ brains indicate the key role of α-synuclein in the pathogenesis of PD.

Deafness is the most prevalent sensory disability across nations. Unlike other senses, hearing has been least understood owing to the challenge in accessing the deeply positioned inner ear. The long term goal of our Auditory Biomechanics Lab at IIT Bombay is to develop a better understanding and effective diagnosis of hearing loss by investigating active vibroacoustics in the inner ear using novel instrumentation as well as computational modeling.

Sunscreen products work by absorbing or scattering UV radiation. Formulating superior sunscreen is of utmost importance in protecting our skin from sunburn, skin cancer and other deleterious effects. This is especially true for people with light skin due to lower concentration of melanin in their skin, which is the natural absorber and dissipater of UV radiation. The normal zinc oxide (ZnO) used as an active ingredient in sunscreen are micro-­dimensional and because of this, they scatter light and appear white when applied on the skin, which is not aesthetically pleasing.