The Hindu Business Line : French institutes keen to forge stem cell tie-ups

With stem cell research starting to enter the application stage, especially in medicine, French institutes are showing keen interest in forging alliances with India to develop potential products.

INSERM, the French national organisation to promote medical research, has held preliminary round of discussions with the Bangalore-based NIMHANS, Manipal Hospital and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), for possible tie-ups.

Dr Bertrand Pain of INSERM and team that visited these centres last week expressed confidence that joint research activity could be established in areas of neurology, heart, diabetes, where stem cell therapy holds big promise.

In France, institutes and hospitals are involved in studying the role of stem cell in targeting heart diseases, blood-related problems and diabetes. Therefore, a synergy could be struck to accelerate development in these areas, Dr Bertrand Pain told Business Line here.

In Hyderabad to attend the Indo-French conference on ‘RNAi in Genome Control’, hosted by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Dr Pain said they were keen to identify different laboratories and even biotech companies for this partnership.

Even in France, biotech companies are just about getting into utilising the opportunities being thrown up by stem cells, especially in medicine and animal genetics. Stem cells have the potential to serve as repair mechanism and help in developing therapies to cure diseases of various organs in the human body.

In India, stem cell research is on the increase in major scientific labs and hospitals. Groups of researchers have reported initial success in stem cell therapy for eye disease, heart problems, muscular dystrophy etc.

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