Industrial Innovations

A Novel in-vivo Assay System for Screening and Validation of Drugs

The development is an assay system with novel features such as: (i) Using Drosophila for the first time as a model to screen drugs against human colon cancer; (ii) An alternative genetic model system to transgenic mice system; (iii) Inexpensive, faster and easy to use genetic system; (iv) Enables studies of toxic effects of the drugs over a number of generations due to short life cycle of the fly; (v) Drug-target interactions in the transgenic files allows the identification of the new genes and drug target system. Until recently mouse has been the model system to study human physiology, biochemistry, diseases, etc. However, with the identification of increasing number of genes causing human diseases, it is becoming important to develop alternative genetic models to study the basic gene functions at lesser costs.

Area: Medical Sciences

Funding agency: Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India

Implementing institute: National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Govt. of India

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