19^th August 2022

The Centre will focus on advancing research on heart, bone, cartilage and cancer through the use of 3D bioprinting 

CELLINK, the global leader in developing 3D bioprinters, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are partnering to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for 3D bioprinting in Bengaluru, India. The CoE, the first of its kind in the subcontinent, will be housed in the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) at IISc, and will provide access to 3D bioprinting systems, enabling researchers to accelerate their work across critical applications, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes. An MoU was signed to formalise the collaboration on 18 August 2022.

3D bioprinting is the application of additive manufacturing techniques to live cells, growth factors and/or biomaterials to fabricate biomedical parts, often with the aim to mimic natural tissue characteristics. 3D bioprinting covers a broad range of bioprinting techniques and biomaterials. Currently, bioprinting can be used to print tissue and organ models to help research drugs and potential treatments.

Photo: KG Haridasan

The new CoE will house several state-of-the-art 3D bioprinters from CELLINK and will serve as a hub for several research initiatives and training activities related to this emerging and exciting technology. Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc, stated, “The CoE will contribute towards exploring new pathways in 3D bioprinting research and technology development. This would also align very well with the new initiative that we have launched to establish a post graduate medical school at IISc. I hope that the interdisciplinary collaboration through the CoE will create new medical technologies for affordable healthcare.”

Photo: KG Haridasan

IISc and CELLINK will work together to conduct workshops aimed at providing researchers within the institute, and elsewhere, the skills necessary to utilise 3D bioprinting in their work and reap the benefits of 3D cell culture. In addition to this, the two will undertake and advise on research projects across multiple applications spanning the fields of tissue engineering, drug discovery, material science and regenerative/personalised medicine. The Centre will have a keen focus on work around the heart, bone, cartilage and cancer.

“We are excited to host this CoE in the Institute, which will help to initiate cutting-edge research in an emerging field of technology with immense potential to benefit human health,” said Prof Narendra Dixit, Chairperson of BSSE.

“It’s an honour to collaborate with one of the most prominent science institutes in India. India has long been at the forefront of scientific discovery, and with the exceptional talent and deep-rooted passion to translate research from the benchtop to the clinic, we are confident that this Centre of Excellence will make a lasting impact on the progress within research in the fields of heart, bone, cartilage and cancer. With IISc we have a tremendous partner and we look forward to creating the future of health together,” added Ms Cecilia Edebo, CEO of CELLINK.

About BSSE:

The Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was founded in 2015, with a vision to develop and apply interdisciplinary approaches for understanding and manipulating biological systems. Since its inception, the Centre has been running a successful PhD programme in the broad area of Bioengineering. The programme was expanded to clinician-scientists, in collaboration with leading medical centres in the country. A new MTech programme in Bioengineering has been initiated in 2022.  Research at the Centre spans a spectrum of areas at the interface of biology and the physicochemical sciences, with a focus on problems of importance to clinicians and industry.

About CELLINK:

CELLINK is creating the future of health as part of BICO, the world’s leading bioconvergence company. When CELLINK released the first universal bioink in 2016, it democratized the cost of entry for researchers around the world and played a major role in turning the then up-and-coming field of 3D bioprinting into a thriving $1 billion industry. Today, the company’s best-in-class bioinks, bioprinters, software and services have been cited in over 700 publications and are trusted by more than 1,000 academic, pharmaceutical and industrial labs.

With a comprehensive portfolio of world-class 3D bioprinters and bioinks CELLINK’s technology enables the printing of human tissues and organs, which enable faster and more accurate models for drug development, while replacing animal experiments and paving the way to save lives by reducing organ rejection and potentially solve the problem with lack of donors.

CONTACT: 

IISc 

IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

CELLINK: 

Avi Minocha, Head of Marketing | akm@cellink.com

30^th August 2022

– Pratibha Gopalakrishna

During the first COVID-19 wave, when Saumitra Das and colleagues were sequencing thousands of samples every day to check for SARS-CoV-2 variants as part of INSACOG, the Government of India’s genome surveillance initiative, they were racing against time to track mutations as they appeared. “If we wanted to predict whether one of these mutations was going to be dangerous from a public health perspective, we needed an assay system,” says Das, Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology (MCB), Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

The assay protocol widely followed, involved isolating the virus from the samples, creating multiple copies of the virus, and studying its transmissibility and efficiency at entering living cells. Working with such a highly infectious virus is dangerous and requires a Bio Safety Level-3 (BSL-3) lab, but there are only a handful of these labs across the country equipped to handle such viruses.

To address this problem, Das and his team, along with collaborators, and with funding from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), have now developed and tested a novel virus-like particle (VLP) – a non-infectious nanoscale molecule that resembles and behaves like the virus but does not contain its native genetic material – in a study published in Microbiology Spectrum.

TEM image of gold particle labelled purified VLP. Image Credit: Raheja et al. 

Such VLPs have several uses. They can not only be used to safely study the effect of mutations that may arise in SARS-CoV-2 – without requiring a BSL-3 facility – but can also potentially be developed into a vaccine candidate that can trigger an immune response in our bodies. Soma Das, a DST Woman Scientist in the Department of Biochemistry and one of the authors, adds that these VLPs can also be used to cut down the time taken to screen drugs that can fight the virus.

Das’ lab has previously studied the Hepatitis C virus for 28 years. They have shown that VLPs can be used as vaccine candidates to trigger an immune response. When the pandemic hit, Das and his team began working on a VLP for SARS-CoV-2. They first had to artificially synthesise a VLP with all the four structural proteins – spike, envelope, membrane and nucleocapsid – seen in the actual virus. “The main challenge was to express all four structural proteins together,” says Harsha Raheja, PhD student at MCB and first author of the study.

VLPs (visible as green dots) in cells (outlined by red colour) Image Credit: Raheja et al. 

SARS-CoV-2 replicates by producing each structural protein separately and then assembling them into a shell containing the genetic material inside to form an active virus particle. To recreate this, the team chose a baculovirus – a virus that affects insects but not humans – as the vector (carrier) to synthesise the VLPs, since it has the ability to produce and assemble all these proteins and replicate quickly. Next, the researchers analysed the VLPs under a transmission electron microscope and found that they were just as stable as the native SARS-CoV-2. At 4 degrees Celsius, the VLP could attach itself to the host cell surface and at 37 degrees Celsius (normal human body temperature), it was able to enter the cell.

When the team injected a high dose of VLPs into mice in the lab, it did not affect the liver, lung, or kidney tissues. To test its immune response, they gave one primary shot and two booster shots to mice models with a gap of 15 days, after which they found a large number of antibodies generated in the blood serum of the mice. These antibodies were also capable of neutralising the live virus, the team found. “This means that they are protecting the animals,” explains Raheja.

The researchers have applied for a patent for their VLP and hope to develop it into a vaccine candidate. They also plan to study the effect of the VLP on other animal models (using the expertise of SG Ramachandra, one of the inventors), and eventually humans. Raheja says they have also developed VLPs that might be able to offer protection against the more recent variants like Omicron and other sub lineages.

REFERENCE: 

Raheja H, Das S, Banerjee A, Dikshaya P, Deepika C, Mukhopadhyay D, Ramachandra SG, Das S, RG203KR mutations in SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid: Assessing the impact using Virus-like particle model system, Microbiology Spectrum, 2022.

https://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.00781-22

CONTACT: 

Saumitra Das
Professor, Department of Microbiology & Cell Biology (MCB),
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: sdas@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-2293 2886

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.

b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.inor pro@iisc.ac.in.

5^th September 2022

On 5^th September 2022, the Government of Telangana and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, announced the signing of an agreement to jointly create India’s first Agricultural Data Exchange (ADEx). ADEx will be built upon India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX), a pioneer in enabling the use of data for public good. IUDX was also created in IISc in partnership with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and has launched a variety of platforms, tools, and applications that have benefitted urban citizens.

The partnership with the Government of Telangana will bring these same concepts to the agriculture sector, enabling a variety of new services for the farmers ranging from more credit options, better insurance products, improved seed tracking, more targeted farming advisory and so on.

ADEx will be piloted in Telangana with a select set of partners and use-cases by early 2023, followed by a production rollout within the same state during that year. Both Public and Private sector data shall be made available through ADEx and a variety of start-ups and more established companies will be encouraged to build these new farmer services. It is expected that the ADEx will then be made available to other states and broadly deployed across the nation.

Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary IT, Government of Telangana, said, “Data is the key to enabling new services for our farmers and improving the agriculture sector. With ADEx, we hope to enable a new ecosystem of application developers who will now have access to a best-of-breed data platform to create applications targeted at bringing technology-driven change to the sector. We are thrilled to collaborate with IISc in this endeavor.”

Prof G Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said, “A nation, where the majority of people make their livelihood from agriculture, needs to apply its considerable technical firepower to this sector. With the ADEx initiative, IISc is pleased to be a part of that effort and we have high hopes that this will help the farmers of Telangana and eventually the nation.”

About IUDX

The IUDX Programme supports India’s Smart Cities Mission within the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and facilitates the use of data to achieve the full potential of technology and innovation within Indian cities. It is set up as a multidisciplinary programme within the Society for Innovation and Development in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The IUDX programme addresses technical and non-technical issues related to the use of data to create public good. The open-source platform developed by the programme enables higher operational efficiency in city administration by facilitating the data exchange between various civic bodies, municipal departments, application developers, and relevant data consumers.

Contact:
IUDX Programme: info@iudx.org.in
IISc Office of Communications: news@iisc.ac.in

8^th September 2022

Axis Bank, India’s third largest sector bank, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, pledging to dedicate the Pediatrics Wing at IISc’s new Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital.

The Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing will be equipped with the latest technology in neonatal care and will have twenty state-of-the-art Neonatal ICU (NICU) beds for the care of critically-ill neonates. The dedicated wing will also enable postgraduate students to undergo world-class training in pediatrics care and further contribute to the development of innovative solutions in this field. This will take forward the IISc Medical School’s ethos of creating a generation of physician-scientists, capable of melding clinical care with cutting-edge research. The Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing is expected to be operational by early 2025.

Commenting on the occasion, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said, “We thank Axis Bank for partnering with us in our quest to push the frontiers of clinical research through the establishment of the Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing. Innovation in neonatal and pediatric care is the need of the hour in a fast-developing country like India. Axis Bank’s support of the pediatrics wing at IISc will contribute to securing the health of our country’s future generations.”

Mr Subrat Mohanty, Group Executive, Axis Bank, said, “We are proud to partner with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India’s premier research institution, for the Pediatrics Wing at the Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital. Our aim is to achieve excellence in clinical research in the field of pediatrics and neonatal care that is critical for India. We hope this collaboration serves our community and the nation for a long time.”

ABOUT AXIS BANK:

Axis Bank is the third largest private sector bank in India. Axis Bank offers the entire spectrum of services to customer segments covering Large and Mid-Corporates, SME, Agriculture and Retail Businesses. With its 4,759 domestic branches (including extension counters) and 10,161 ATMs across the country as on 30th June 2022, the network of Axis Bank spreads across 2,702 cities and towns, enabling the Bank to reach out to a large cross-section of customers with an array of products and services. The Axis Group includes Axis Mutual Fund, Axis Securities Ltd., Axis Finance, Axis Trustee, Axis Capital, A.TReDS Ltd., Freecharge and Axis Bank Foundation.

For further information on Axis Bank, please refer to the website: https://www.axisbank.com.

CONTACT:

IISc
Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

Axis Bank
Piyali Reddy / Shruti Mudup
+91 9322657983 / +91 9820651056 | Corporate.Communication@axisbank.com

12^th September 2022

– Faizan Bhat

Cell membranes transition seamlessly between distinct 3D configurations. It is a remarkable feature that is essential for several biological phenomena such as cell division, cell mobility, transport of nutrients into cells, and viral infections. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and their collaborators have recently devised an experiment that sheds light on the mechanism by which such processes might occur in real time.

Image (false coloured) of a sponge-like phase of fluidic colloidal membranes, self-assembled from a binary mixture of short and long rods. Credit: Ayantika Khanra

The researchers looked at colloidal membranes, which are micrometre-thick layers of aligned, rod-like particles. Colloidal membranes provide a more tractable system to study as they exhibit many of the same properties as cell membranes. Unlike a plastic sheet, where all the molecules are immobile, cell membranes are fluidic sheets in which each component is free to diffuse. “This is a key property of cell membranes which is available in our [colloidal membrane] system as well,” explains Prerna Sharma, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics, IISc, and corresponding author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The colloidal membranes were composed by preparing a solution of rod-shaped viruses of two different lengths: 1.2 micrometre and 0.88 micrometre. The researchers studied how the shape of the colloidal membranes changes as one increases the fraction of short rods in the solution. “I made multiple samples by mixing different volumes of the two viruses and then observed them under a microscope,” explains Ayantika Khanra, a PhD student in the Department of Physics and the first author of the paper.

Image (false coloured) of a fluidic colloidal membrane self-assembled from a binary mixture of short and long rods  Credit: Ayantika Khanra

When the ratio of short rods was increased from 15% to between 20-35%, the membranes transitioned from a flat disc-like shape to a saddle-like shape. Over time, the membranes started merging together and growing in size. Saddles were classified by their order, which is the number of ups and downs encountered as one moves along the saddle edge. The researchers observed that when the saddles merged laterally, they formed a bigger saddle of the same or higher order. However, when they merged at an almost right angle, away from their edges, the final configuration was a catenoid-like shape. The catenoids then merged with other saddles, giving rise to increasingly complex structures, like trinoids and four-noids.

To explain the observed behaviour of the membranes, the researchers have also proposed a theoretical model. According to the laws of thermodynamics, all physical systems tend to move towards low-energy configurations. For example, a water droplet assumes a spherical shape because it has lower energy. For membranes, this means that shapes with shorter edges, such as a flat disk, are more favoured. Another property that plays a role in defining the membrane configuration is the Gaussian curvature modulus. A key insight of the study was to show that the Gaussian curvature modulus of the membranes increases when the fraction of short rods is increased. This explains why adding more short rods drove the membranes towards saddle-like shapes, which are lower in energy. It also explains another observation from their experiment where low-order membranes were small in size, while high-order membranes were large.

“We have proposed a mechanism for curvature generation of fluidic membranes that is new. This mechanism of tuning the curvature by changing the Gaussian modulus could be at play in biological membranes as well,” says Sharma. She adds that they want to continue studying how other microscopic changes in the membrane components affect the large-scale properties of membranes.

REFERENCE: 

Khanra A, Jia L, Mitchell N, Balchunas A, Pelcovits R, Powers T, Dogic Z, Sharma P, Controlling the shape and topology of two-component colloidal membranes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2204453119

CONTACT:

Prerna Sharma
Associate Professor
Department of Physics
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: prerna@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293 2010

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/biocolloids/

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

14^th September 2022

– Sindhu M

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have designed a new method to deliver a vaccine candidate for tuberculosis (TB). It involves using spherical vesicles secreted by bacteria coated on gold nanoparticles which can then be delivered to immune cells. This can potentially trigger an immune response and offer protection against the disease.

Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, TB kills over a million people worldwide every year. The only effective vaccine currently in use is the BCG vaccine. It contains a weakened form of the disease-causing bacterium. When injected into our bloodstream, it triggers the production of antibodies that can help fight the disease.

Transmission electron microscope image of gold nanoparticles coated with bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles (Credit: Edna George)

While the BCG vaccine works well in children, it is not as effective at protecting adolescents and adults. This prompted Rachit Agarwal, Assistant Professor at the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE), IISc, and his group to develop a potential subunit vaccine candidate that contains only parts of the infectious bacterium to stimulate an immune response.

Scientists have earlier developed subunit vaccines based on just a handful of proteins from the disease-causing bacteria, but none of them have been effective so far. Instead, Agarwal’s group decided to use Outer Membrane Vesicles (OMVs). OMVs are spherical membrane-bound particles released by some bacteria, and contain an assortment of proteins and lipids which could induce an immune response against the pathogen.

“They’re safer compared to a live bacterium, and since they are membrane-derived, they contain all kinds of antigens,” explains Agarwal, the senior author of the paper published in Biomaterials Advances. Subunit vaccines typically only contain a limited number of antigens – bacterial proteins that can elicit an immune response in the host. In contrast, OMVs contain a variety of antigens and can induce a better immune response, according to the researchers.

Mycobacterium-derived OMVs are usually unstable and come in different sizes, making them unsuitable for vaccine applications. But the OMVs coated on gold nanoparticles (OMV-AuNPs) by the IISc team were found to be uniform in size and stable. The researchers also found that human immune cells showed a higher uptake of OMV-AuNPs than of OMVs or gold nanoparticles alone.

“Producing the OMVs is a complex process, and scaling it up was challenging,” says Avijit Goswami, a former postdoctoral fellow at BSSE and one of the first authors of the study.

“To synthesise OMV-AuNPs, the OMVs and the gold nanoparticles are forced together through a 100 nm filter. The OMVs break up in the process and encapsulate the gold nanoparticles,” explains Edna George, a former postdoctoral fellow at BSSE, and co-first author of the study.

In the study, immune cells cultured in the lab were treated with OMVs derived from Mycobacterium smegmatis, a related bacterial species that does not cause disease in humans. In future studies, the team plans to develop gold-coated OMVs derived directly from Mycobacterium tuberculosis and test them on animal models to take the results forward for clinical applications. Such efforts could open up new avenues for the development of vaccines for other bacterial diseases as well.

 REFERENCE: 

George E, Goswami A, Lodhiya T, Padwal P, Iyer S, Gautam I, Sethi L, Jayasankar S, Sharma PR, Dravid AA, Mukherjee R, Agarwal R, Immunomodulatory effect of mycobacterial outer membrane vesicles coated nanoparticles, Biomaterials Advances (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioadv.2022.213003 

CONTACT: 

Rachit Agarwal
Assistant Professor
Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: rachit@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-2293-3626

Website: https://be.iisc.ac.in/~rachit/index.html

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: 

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

16^th September 2022

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Shell India have entered into a partnership to promote research and development in the areas of energy and environment. The partnership seeks to build on cutting-edge energy and environment related research being carried out at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER), IISc.

On Thursday, 15 September 2022, a research agreement was signed at the Institute in the presence of Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Yuri Sebregts, Chief Technology Officer at Shell.

The key aspects that the partnership will focus on include reducing Green House Gas emissions and promoting decarbonisation through innovations such as low-carbon fuels, distributed electrification, carbon sinks, hydrogen generation, efficient power and refrigeration cycles using supercritical carbon dioxide, and so on. Structured research projects will be initiated under this research agreement involving Shell scientists as well as faculty members and students at IISc.

Decarbonisation of diverse industrial sectors and increased access to clean energy through technological intervention has a special place in the Indian context, given its push for net-zero emissions. With climate change taking centre stage, a strong emphasis is on decarbonisation through alternative fuels and improving efficiency as well as utilisation of existing fuels.

Prof Govindan Rangarajan said, “This collaboration with Shell India will help us tackle pressing energy challenges at the national and international level through cutting-edge technology development that will help reduce the global carbon footprint. We are excited to partner with Shell India to achieve these ambitious goals.”

The collaboration also envisages developing India-focused solutions to meet the energy transition needs outlined by the Government of India. It is also expected to increase capacity building in the country through training programmes at the postgraduate level, opening up opportunities for students to pursue industry internships, and encourage entrepreneurial ventures by young researchers.

“This partnership demonstrates how crucial it is for academia and industry to collaborate. By integrating expertise from diverse partners, we are able to accelerate the development of ground-breaking technologies that provide much-needed solutions for the energy transition. I look forward to the impactful innovations that no doubt will follow from this research agreement with IISc,” said Yuri Sebregts, Chief Technology Officer at Shell.

ICER has been carrying out both fundamental and applied research in energy-related areas, with a strong emphasis on translating products to the energy market. It was conceived in 2012 as a part of the Institute’s post-centenary vision to pursue socially relevant research in line with the Government of India’s national missions. ICER seeks to expand its activities in several domains, with emphasis on process and material development, the latter involving collaborations with manufacturing industries.

 CONTACT: 

IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

20^th September 2022

– Seemadri Subhadarshini

Several industrial, automotive, and healthcare applications rely on accurate and precise measurement of pressure. Flexible and wearable pressure sensors are typically fabricated using petroleum-based polymers. The solid waste generated from using such non-biodegradable plastics is harmful for the environment. To avoid this issue, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have now fabricated pressure sensors that use paper as the medium.

A pressure sensor detects physical pressure and converts it into an electrical signal that is displayed in the form of a number indicative of its magnitude. Nowadays, paper-based electronic devices are gaining greater attention owing to their natural biodegradability, excellent flexibility, porous fibrous structure, light weight, and low cost. However, paper-based sensors developed so far have certain disadvantages.

“In any sensor, there is always a trade-off between sensitivity and dynamic range. We want to have high sensitivity. Sensitivity is essentially a measure of the smallest entity (amount of pressure) that we can detect. And we want to sense that quantity over an extensive range,” says Navakanta Bhat, Professor at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) and corresponding author of the paper published in the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. His team has proposed a design for the paper sensor that, by virtue of its structure and multilayering, achieves high sensitivity and can detect a broad range of pressures (0-120 kPa) with a response time of 1 millisecond.

The sensor is made of plain and corrugated cellulose papers coated with tin-monosulfide (SnS) stacked alternatively to form a multi-layered architecture. SnS is a semiconductor that conducts electricity under specific conditions. “Paper in itself is an insulator. The major challenge was choosing an appropriate 3D device structure and material to give conductive properties to paper,” says Neha Sakhuja, a former PhD student at CeNSE and the first author of the paper.

Wearable paper pressure sensor (Credit: Neha Sakhuja)

When pressure is applied on the sensor’s surface, the air gaps between the paper layers decrease, increasing the contact area between these layers. Higher contact area leads to better electrical conductivity. On releasing the pressure, the air gaps increase again, thus decreasing the electrical conduction. This modulation of the electrical conductivity drives the sensing mechanism of the paper sensor.

“Our key contribution is the simplicity of the device. It is like creating paper origami,” explains Bhat.

The sensor shows promise in being developed into a flexible and wearable electronic device, especially in the healthcare sector. For example, the research team mounted it onto a human cheek to investigate the motion involved in chewing, strapped it to an arm to monitor muscle contraction, and around fingers to track their tapping. The team even designed a numeric, foldable keypad constructed using the in-house paper-based pressure sensor to demonstrate the device’s usability.

“The future applications of this device are limited only by our imagination,” says Bhat. “We would [also] like to work on increasing the stability and durability of these sensors and possibly collaborate with industries to manufacture them in large numbers.”

REFERENCE:
Sakhuja N, Kumar R, Katare P, Bhat N, Structure-Driven, Flexible, Multilayered, Paper-Based Pressure Sensor for Human–Machine Interfacing, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c08491

CONTACT:

Navakanta Bhat
Professor, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE),
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: navakant@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-2293-3312

Website: http://nnfc.cense.iisc.ac.in/nano/

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: 

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

21^st September 2022

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have signed an MoU on Friday, 16 September 2022, to collaborate on a national initiative towards the creation of high-quality medical datasets representing India’s diversity. ICMR and IISc will develop a technology-enabled hubs-and-spokes system of collecting and curating data through institutions across the country. ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park), a not-for-profit foundation promoted by IISc, will serve as the initiative’s partner for technology development and programme management.

Artificial Intelligence solutions – for screening, diagnosis, and decision support – hold much promise to improve access to healthcare, and boost productivity and effectiveness of health human resources at all levels. Quality-assured and curated medical imaging datasets that truly represent India’s diversity of people, settings, and needs will accelerate research and innovation to realise that promise. Such independent, benchmark data will also help assess AI-based tools developed by startups and companies, and thus accelerate deployment in practice.

By leveraging premier medical institutions as hubs and bringing together experts from both medicine and data science, the team driving this initiative will help standardise data collection from many “spoke” institutions. It will also help curate that data and aim to make them available, in accordance with applicable policies and laws, to the broader community of researchers and innovators.

Welcoming the initiative, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director of IISc, said, “Our goal is to bring together the best of technology, data science, and medical research to improve healthcare. This partnership with ICMR will enable us to do exactly that by creating invaluable datasets to propel the next generation of innovations for India and the world.”

Sh Rajeev Roy, Sr Financial Advisor, ICMR, said, “ICMR is investing in medical research of the country through its various focused programs. The present MoU will enhance the outcome of the investment by providing value-added, reusable data sources to researchers from medical research and engineering institutions.”

Dr Harpreet Singh, Head Division of Biomedical Informatics, ICMR, added, “Both IISc and ICMR share a rich history of holding the highest standards in research for more than 100 years. Activities and interests of both institutes complement each other, and thus, the activities proposed under the MoU, particularly the medical data platform, will provide far-reaching benefits to public health.”

CONTACT:

IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

28^th September 2022

– Ullas A 

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with AIIMS Rishikesh, have developed an algorithm that can help decode brain scans to identify the occurrence and type of epilepsy.

Epilepsy is a neurological disease where the brain emits sudden bursts of electrical signals in a short amount of time, resulting in seizures, fits, and in extreme cases, death. Based on the point of origin of the brain’s erratic signals, epilepsy is classified as either focal or generalised epilepsy. Focal epilepsy occurs when the erratic signals are confined to a specific region in the brain. If the signals are at random locations, then it is termed as generalised epilepsy.

To identify whether a patient is epileptic, neurophysiologists need to manually inspect EEGs (electroencephalograms), which can capture such erratic signals. Visual inspection of EEG can become tiring after prolonged periods, and may occasionally lead to errors, says Hardik J Pandya, Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE) and the corresponding author of the study published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control. “The research aims to differentiate EEG of normal subjects from epileptic EEGs. Additionally, the developed algorithm attempts to identify the types of seizures. Our work is to help the neurologists make an efficient and quick automated screening and diagnosis,” he adds.

In their study, the team reports a novel algorithm that can sift through EEG data and identify signatures of epilepsy from the electrical signal patterns. After initial training, the algorithm was able to detect whether a human subject could have epilepsy or not – based on these patterns in their respective analyses – with a high degree of accuracy, the researchers say.

To develop and train the algorithm, the researchers first examined EEG data from 88 human subjects acquired at AIIMS Rishikesh. Each subject underwent a 45-minute EEG test, divided into two parts: an initial 10-minute test when the subject was awake, which included photic stimulation and hyperventilation, followed by a 35-minute sleep period when the subject was asked to sleep. Next, the team analysed this data and classified different wave patterns into sharp signals, spikes, and slow waves. Spikes are patterns where a signal rises and falls within a very short duration of time (~70 milliseconds), while sharps are those with rises and falls spread over a slightly longer duration (~250 milliseconds), and slow waves have a much longer duration (~400 milliseconds).

Approach to detect and classify epileptic seizures (Credit: Rathin K Joshi)

An epileptic subject shows a different set of patterns compared to a healthy individual. The researchers developed an algorithm to calculate the total number of sharp waves – the Cumulative Sharp Count – and use this as a parameter to detect if the subject is epileptic or not (a higher value indicates a greater chance that the subject is epileptic). The algorithm also calculates the sum of areas under the spikes and sharp curves to distinguish between focal and generalised epilepsy (a greater value indicates generalised epilepsy, as opposed to focal epilepsy, which has a lower value). The researchers add that the study shows a way to identify absence seizures (those that involve a brief, sudden lapse of consciousness), using a Cumulative Spike-Wave Count; in some cases, these absence seizures are critical and can be fatal.

The team then ran their algorithm on a new set of EEG data from subjects for whom the classification (whether they had epilepsy, and if so, what type of epilepsy they had) was already known to the doctors. This blind validation study successfully classified the subjects accurately in nearly 91% of the cases.

“We hope to refine this further by testing on more data to consider more variabilities of human EEGs until we reach the point where this becomes completely translational and robust,” says Rathin K Joshi, a PhD student in DESE and first author of the study.

Currently, a patent has been filed for the work and the algorithm is being tested for its reliability by physicians at AIIMS Rishikesh.

REFERENCE:

Joshi RK, Kumar V, Agrawal M, Rao A,  Mohan L, Jayachandra M,  Pandya HJ, Spatiotemporal analysis of interictal EEG for automated seizure detection and classification, Biomedical Signal Processing and Control (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2022.104086

CONTACT:

Hardik J Pandya
Assistant Professor
Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: hjpandya@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91 80 2293 3084

Website: https://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/beeslab/beeslab_teams/dr-hardik-j-pandya/

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