Organizing Committee Member
Jagat Rakesh Kanwar
Professor
Deakin University
Australia
Biography
Professor Kanwar is the group leader and laboratory head of Nanomedicine-Laboratory of Immunology and Molecular Biomedical Research in School of Medicine, Faculty of Health at Deakin University. His earlier research (for nearly a decade in New Zealand) has focused on studying pathophysiology and devising new treatments mainly for cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases. Prof. Kanwar is currently working on nanotechnology/nanomedicine based protein/peptide, aptamers and his research approach employs monotherapy (gene therapy, immunotherapy) and combinational therapy with commercially available chemotherapeutic agents including LNA-aptamers (RNA/DNA), peptides and other biomolecules such as siRNA, miRNA, aptamers, proteins, siRNA, miRNA and their chimera (LNA-aptamer chimera with siRNA/miRNA delivery for targeting expression of survivin (the validated anti-cancer target), HIF-1 and apoptotic signalling molecules’ in cancer and chronic inflammation.
Research Area
An immense focus of the group is to develop non-conventional therapeutics involving compounds for cancer and other inflammatory diseases. Nanomedicine is the need for the day to develop, synthesise and characterize of nanoformulations that can achieve a more targeted and specific delivery system is being carried out in the NLIMBR laboratory. Extensive research is carried out for development and physio-chemical characterization of biodegradable and biocompatible drug delivery vehicles. Novel targeted delivery systems possessing enhanced permeation retention effect, stability and narrow size range have been successfully synthesised. A number of other developments including microfluidics, nanodevices, nanosensers and microchips for targeted delivery and diagnosis are also our major interests. The principle aim is to achieve a system where there is a diagnostic and therapeutic approach to target cancer and other inflammatory conditions. Recently microfluidic systems being worked upon are targeting an approach to less time consuming and more economic methods for cancer and microbial infection diagnosis.