StemCell Therapy

Your familys philanthropic foundation, Pratiksha Trust, has also invested in brain research. In 2014, it donated 225 crore to set up the Centre for Brain Research (CBR), at IISc. How is that going?

There are two interesting projects the CBR is pursuing. The first one is a longitudinal study. It is studying 10,000 people over a period of 10 years in Kolar [district, in Karnataka] to see how the brain ages. These people are healthy individuals without dementia, aged 45 years and above.

There have been some hiccups in conducting the study and collecting data due to the pandemic. But it will restart soon. Till now, they have covered more than 2,000 people. It will be the first comprehensive database of Indian subjects on how they age. Theres a similar study done by CBR on urban subjects in Bengaluru which is funded by the Tata Trusts. The studies show interesting insights and the contrasting lifestyle between people in urban and rural areas.

The second programme is the Genome India Project (GIP) which is supported by the Department of Biotechnology [under the ministry of science and technology]. CBR at IISc is one of the over 20 labs involved in the project across the country. [The project aims to collect over 10,000 genetic samples from people across India to build a reference genome.] We dont have a comprehensive database of DNA sequences of Indian subjects. Besides my grant of 225 crore, there are other research programmes that I support. Overall, my support for research work alone is approximately 400 crore, currently spanning across brain, brain sciences, stem cell research, and others.

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