Prof. Rangappa-headed research team collaborates with Israeli scientists

Mysore:  Scientists from the University of Mysore (UoM) headed by former UoM Vice-Chancellor and the present General President of Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) Prof. K.S. Rangappa have published an article on cancer research that has gained international significance. The article titled “Targeting heparanase in cancer: Inhibition by Synthetic, Chemically Modified and Natural Compounds,” has been published in the journal iScience.

The iScience journal is published by Cell Press, which is an internationally renowned and reputed science research publisher. This is the first paper to be published in Cell Press: iScience from the Universities of Karnataka. It is the result of international collaboration between Prof. Rangappa and Prof. Israel Vlodavsky from Vascular Biology Research Centre, Israel.

The collaborative research project was initiated in 2016 for a period of three years and funded by University Grants Commission (UGC) to Prof. Rangappa and Israel Science Foundation to the Israeli counterpart.

The UoM team headed by Prof. Rangappa include Dr. C.D. Mohan, Dr. R. Shobith (Adichunchanagiri Institute for Molecular Medicine), Dr. Chandra Nayak and Dr. Basappa. The Israel team is led by Prof. Israel Vlodavsky.

Heparanase is an enzyme that provides signal to cancer cell for proliferation and responsible for the spreading of cancer to various organs of the human body. This paper comprehensively discusses the role of heparanase enzyme in initiation and spreading of cancer to the different organs and provides an insight and new ideas to the researchers to design new drugs against cancer using heparanase as the target.  

Many synthetic drug molecules are synthesized from Prof. Rangappa’s laboratory and tested against various cancers in past two decades.

Prof. Rangappa has 11 patents for the development of anti-cancer agents and 450 research papers related to medicinally important compounds. Several patented molecules are in clinical trials against different types of cancers.

Invitation from premier institutions

Following the success of publishing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA and iScience (Cell Press), Prof. Rangappa has been invited by the leading researchers of Finland, China and, Philippines to discuss about cancer drug discovery and to have international bilateral collaboration between the respective premier institutions.

He has already visited University of St. Thomas Cancer Research Institute, Philippines  and held discussions with its Director on development of anti-cancer agents.

Asked whether all the patents were related to cancer, Prof. Rangappa, speaking to Star of Mysore said, “Yes, all patents are related to cancer only. Only the latest one is unique while all others are for specific cancer which we have targeted. The tenth one is the unique one which is giving response. The two unique properties of this molecule are that it responds to all types of cancers but does not touch the normal cells. Because of this uniqueness only it was published in the leading journal.