Friday, August 5 2005 19:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Hyderabad: President A P J Abdul Kalam today (August 5, 2005) told the microbiologists to focus on the genetic reason for higher incidence of cardiac diseases among Indians besides undertaking genomic study to find the cause of "sickle cell diseases" affecting the common man.

Inaugurating the Centre For Excellence (CFE) at Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) here, Kalam highlighted the need for convergence of technologies aimed at benefitting the common man.

"Convergence of bioscience and IT into Bioinformatics has given the thrust to researchers for genomics-based drug discovery and development to help pharmaceutical companies to come out with tomorrow's drugs," Kalam said.

Expressing concern over missing the bus in partnering the human genome project, Kalam suggested to the biomedical community to take the initiative to become a working partner in the proteomics project of gene characterisation.

Characterisation of tuberculosis (TB) HIV pathogens and curative and preventive measures for Sickle Cell disease, which is rampant among agency areas more so in Chhattisgarh, through genome study is the most demanding need, he said.

About 25 lakh people are expected to be suffering from the Sickle Cell disease and life expectancy of this population is quite low where this `silent killer' prevails, he said and urged the microbiologist to address to this problem.

The President also wanted to find out the genetic reason as to why Indians are more prone to cardiac disease.

The CFE is a collaborative venture between Andhra Pradesh government, CDFD and Sun Microsystems.

Kalam said "focus should also be laid on creation of database on stem cell research, progressing in various parts of the world particularly relating to our country."

Evolution of tele-medial bioinformatics network for education, training and collaborative research should also get the right priority, the President added.

On the gene chip research, he said, it can be used for finding the existence of genetic diseases and efforts should be made if medical bioinformatics can help in finding a treatment regime for the mother, in advanced stages of pregnancy, which may give immunity to the child from the allergic disease.

Andhra Pradesh Governor Sushil Kumar Shinde, CDFD Director Syed Hasnain, Bhaskar Pramanik, Managing Director for Sun Microsystems India also participated in the function.