Pune: Dr Jayant Khandare, Chief Scientific Officer at Actorius Innovations and Research, has been conferred with the prestigious Dr A V Ramarao Entrepreneurship Award from National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune.
Dr Jayant Khandare is an academician and technology entrepreneur with extensive experience in developing innovations and technologies in the areas of biotechnology, medical diagnostics and pharmaceutical sciences. He holds a prolific scientific publication record with more than 70 peer-reviewed publications, 15 US patents, multiple book chapters and numerous invited lectures.
Dr Khandare is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher fellowship in Germany, the Early Career Scientist award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), U.K. Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Science (MASc) and Director- School of Consciousness, MIT WPU, Pune and the co-founder of biotech startups developing innovations in the area of cancer diagnostics and therapy.
Dr Khandare is also Co-founder of Actorius Innovations and Research Pvt Ltd (AIR), a Pune-based research and development company that has created a novel biomaterial having critical applications in the life science, drug delivery and medical diagnostics field.
The company has launched its first product, the ‘OncoDiscover Liquid Biopsy Test’, a minimally invasive test which can be performed multiple times, requiring just 1.5ml blood volume. This test is an excellent tool for therapy monitoring and can be performed at multiple time points such as during initial check-up, pre-surgery, post-surgery, post chemotherapy and during follow-up. Since Circulating Tumour Cells (CTC) present in patient blood are enumerated (counted) by this test, it becomes a quantitative benchmark to monitor disease progression and therapy effectiveness.
Elaborating more on this technology, Dr Jayant Khandare said, “Using advanced biomaterials, we identify cancer cells from more than a billion cells present in that sample. We had taken ethical permission from Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, to conduct clinical trials. The biomaterial and specificity required are very high for this kind of test, and we have managed to achieve it.”
