Cancer Warriors & Radiobiophotonics - Dr. Rao Papineni

Cancer Warriors and Radiobiophotonics at Cancun RRS 2017

Initiating this blog on 9/11 Remembrance Day, would like to share some of our recent events and also the program ahead from my lab.

Late Breaking Presentation

We are pleased to share that the "Late Breaking" Research submission

Title: "Focused irradiation of EDL muscle bundle and functional study- a feasibility study." 

 Dr. Rao Papineni & Dr. George Rodney

was accepted at the  Radiation Research Society  (RRS 2017) Meeting at Cancun.  This Work from Papineni & Rodney Labs will showcase the Feasibility & the Novel Approach in Assessing Radiation Effects on individual Muscle.  With one in three cancer patients loosing the battle due to muscle related issues, this technological advance will be crucial in future mitigation studies. This work will highlight the design and development of a miniaturized X-ray muscle Irradiation system.

#Cachexia #MuscleAtrophy #X-Ray  

The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Radiation Research Society is to be held at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach in Cancun, Mexico on October 15-18, 2017. The scientific program covers state-of-the-art in radiation sciences with an emphasis on Translating Radiation Research: From Risk to Therapy.  Here, I had the privilege to design and develop a symposium on a new and growing field of Radiobiophotonics.

SYMPOSIUM  Recent Advances in Radiobiophotonics, Nanomedicine and Imaging

  
Chair: Dr. Rao Papineni

Look forward to seeing many of you at Cancun.


Finally, adding the short article that was requested by a Tabloid to showcase the 25 year achievement in grooming young minds towards advance science, medicine and innovation.

 http://www.chennaicitynews.net/news/nextgen-cancer-warriors-in-making-by-dr-rao-v-l-papineni-53722/

               

              NextGen Cancer Warriors in Making

                                    by Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni

 

The bitter truth is that cancer the deadly human scourge will plague humanity for generations to come.  We might have to chalk out Moonshot, Mars, and Jupitershot battles with time, to win this war.  A silent movement has been taking place at scores of research labs to coax, cajole, and entice young minds to get baptized into Cancer Research.  We invite High School students and impart scientific knowledge, training, and encouragement grooming them for future science and medicine program.  High school/college students join my laboratory or Papineni Labs Projects elsewhere during summer as interns and broaden their horizons. We are proud to celebrate 25th summer in training young minds akin to gurukul traditions.  At every opportunity, I keep remembering my favorite teacher (Hindi) Mr. K. Sridhar from Hindu Theological high School, Madras.  He used to inculcate us with appropriate slokas the power and value of knowledge transfer and to train students. 

The bitter truth is that cancer the deadly human scourge will plague humanity for generations to come.

It all started when my mentor Prof. Tom Boyde at University of HongKong asked me one summer day early 1990’s to draft a plan and proposal to train a summer student from Eton College, United Kingdom.  Thus I started with this heart-warming knowledge transfer program.  Though all students did not directly work on cancer related projects, they definitely had scope to pursue oncology ahead.  I still recall the first mini-project Jonathan Leong of Eton worked on-  To trick the immune machinery in making better affinity antibodies.  Simple idea back in 90’s I believed, turns out a useful path for current cancer immunotherapy.

Dr.Jyotsna Rao with Arnav and Pranayi

  They themselves have their own robust summer training programs.  This summer turned out to be exciting with couple of high school students Arnav Sankaranthi of Fremont, California, and Ms. Pranayi Pala of Dallas, taking courage and embarked on a trans-continental trip to work on a collaborative project on Radiomics.  They both joined Dr. Jyotsna Rao at Apollo Hospital India learning all about cancer Diagnostics while working on other project.  Both these kids accomplished quite a lot during the 2- week program and are working on a short review article.  Earlier this summer, Arnav along with his twin brother Abhinav  Sankaranthi and Ms. Somya Moyya of UCSD went through training at Dr. George Rodney’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. 

                 students/interns                                                                                                                         

  There is no clear data; however I believe these summer research programs going on for decades all over the globe have generated great cancer warriors.  The cross-border and trans-continental training programs will add new perspectives and sharpen the skills of the young minds. It’s time to collaborate, exchange ideas and skills in this combat.   Cancer: the horrid scourge is not invincible.   

In an Industry setup, my lab had more opportunities to young minds from different walks of life. I am grateful to my friends and collaborators Dr. Shahid Umar of KUMC, Dr. George Rodney, Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Jyotsna Rao, Apollo Hospitals, and others who help in this process.

Summer Science and Lab Fun

Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni is an Adjunct faculty member at University of Kansas Medical Center, and a molecular theragnostics scientist at PXI,  USA. He received his doctoral degree in Biochemistry from University of Hong Kong (British Terr). Dr. Papineni had his early education from University of Madras, where he earned his Bachelors and Master’s Degree. After ten years in Research and Faculty positions at University of Hong Kong and Baylor college of Medicine (USA), he joined Kodak/Carestream Health, USA.  Dr. Papineni has made several inventions and chaired scientific sessions in International

Papineni Labs are Biomedical Research Labs in Honor of my Father Mr. Papineni Venkateswara Rao.

http://www.radres.org/blogpost/961725/250704/Cancer-Therapy--Radiobiophotonics-with-Rao-Papineni
 

    "Molecular Imaging - Wisdom to See for Maladies to Flee"
                                                                                                                                             Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni

 

Turmeric a Medicine - Enigmatic Medicinal Actions

        Turmeric a Medicine - Enigmatic Medicinal Actions

            Papineni Labs     Curcumin Infection Treatment - Clinical Imaging

Turmeric is a Medicine - established through centuries by a unique class of researchers practicing Ayurveda, Siddha, and other old world medicine.  Curcumin is a compound in turmeric with the golden medicinal property.   Pongal and Sankaranthi are major Indian Harvest Festival where turmeric is copiously used by everyone.  One can see loads of young turmeric all over the wet market.    

Waking up on this Pongal Day, I was really disappointed to see the following commentary titled “Deceptive curcumin offers cautionary tale for chemists” in one of the premier research journal http://www.nature.com/news/deceptive-curcumin-offers-cautionary-tale-for-chemists-1.21269.  The author of the commentary states that the turmeric extracts dupes assays and leads drug hunters astray.  The commentary highlights the review (K. M. Nelson et al. J. Med. Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975; 2017), published on 11 January.  Here, the authors published a most comprehensive critical review on curcumin.  Their conclusions - no evidence in curcumin’s therapeutic benefits, despite thousands of research papers and more than 120 clinical trials is a big Jolt!  Sad to notice this auspicious root is getting a bad rap due to improper research approaches applied by many laboratories in evaluating the curcumin drug action mechanisms.  In many cases, sloppy science is a factor as discussed by the contributors of the above works.

This turmeric compound spreads its wings with a predatory effect on a billion dollar market in cure of a range of diseases from erectile dysfunction, hirsutism, baldness, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, big establishments can go curries in this golden concoction.    

Everyone agrees turmeric has all the potential to be a true multi-tasking drug.  It’s just that, meticulous biochemical and pharmacological approaches aided with the cutting-edge molecular imaging and high-throughput assays need to be followed.  Here is a compound, Gold, that took a millennium to establish its medicinal properties in the east – scientific community can’t just throw hands up in despair and walk away within a decade. 

In Papineni Labs, my first attempt with curcumin on human skin disorder was promising. We designed and developed a Clinical Molecular Imaging System for early detection of cardiovascular changes in diabetes and other diseases http://www.fasebj.org/content/25/1_Supplement/815.13.short.  Using this first of its kind clinical optical imaging instrument, we tested effects of curcumin on ringworm infection as a proof-of-principle.  Ringworm is a common fungal infection that appears as patches of red ring on the skin.  We used the near infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging to image the infection and subsequent treatment using topical curcumin application.  In this work, non-invasive autofluorescence imaging was performed utilizing the natural fluorescence resultant of the fungal infection. Curcumin showed a success where over- the-counter and prescription drug treatments failed with a subject.  Curcumin did show a promise, a larger sample size and additional methodologies are needed to nail the mode of action. We reported this fluorescence based methodology at the World Molecular Imaging Congress WMIC 2011 San Diego, USA and in Bhubaneshwar (Society of Nuclear Medicine- India 2012).

Yes, our ancestors were right in terms of the medicinal properties of turmeric.  It is just quite complex to isolate the primary compounds from this elixir and to dissect its mode of action.  Not impossible, especially with developments in Imaging, animal models, mass spectrophotometers, and high throughput drug screening methods in hand.  

Madras (Chennai) News Item:

'

http://www.chennaicitynews.net/turmeric-is-medicine-dr-rao-v-l-papineni/

 

Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni

Professor (Adjunct- assistant)

University of Kansas Medical Center KUMC

USA

Email: Papineni@graduate.hku.hk

Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni is an Adjunct faculty member at University of Kansas Medical Center, and a molecular theragnostics scientist at PXI,  USA. He received his doctoral degree in Biochemistry from University of Hong Kong (British Terr). Dr. Papineni had his early education from University of Madras, where he earned his Bachelors and Master’s Degree. After ten years in Research and Faculty positions at University of Hong Kong and Baylor college of Medicine (USA), he joined Kodak/Carestream Health, USA.  Dr. Papineni has made several inventions and chaired scientific sessions in International Biomedical Meetings and serves on the editorial board of Nanotech and Experimental Pharmacology journals.  As a distinguished scientist, he initiated advanced research programs to study Inflammation and oncology utilizing molecular imaging and nanotechnology based molecular tools.  He recently identified and coined “Radiobioluminescence” a novel X-ray induced radiation phenomena that have immense potential in development of cancer therapeutic strategies.  His lab is instrumental in development of MIGRT  Molecular Image Guided Radiation Therapy technology and utilizing radiobiophotonics and MIGRT in Drug Discovery related to Cancer and radiation medicine.

 

http://www.radres.org/blogpost/961725/250704/Cancer-Therapy--Radiobiophotonics-with-Rao-Papineni
 
"Molecular Imaging - Wisdom to See for Maladies to Flee"
                                                          Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni