Calcutta could become one of the primary beneficiaries of a new international collaborative effort to develop new treatments for cancer.

Global cell therapy leaders CyGenics Ltd, which will build and operate a full umbilical cord blood tissue processing and storage facility in the city, has announced its participation in the international initiative that automatically puts Calcutta in the loop.

This novel approach involves developing and mobilising immune cells outside the human body.

Called PACRIMA, the project brings together leading organisations from four countries: Division Haemato-Oncology of University Hospital Maastricht (AZM), the Netherlands, CyGenics, Maia-Scientific NV of Belgium, Pharmacell BV of the Netherlands, and a leading stem cell research institute in Japan.

?Eventually, other CyGenics companies will make their way to Calcutta and India. These will include Cell Sciences, which among other things, sell the three-dimensional growth matrix that would be the basis for the PACRIMA initiative, and Cytomatrix, which has been developing the matrix since 1996. So, any positive outcome of the research will impact Calcutta directly,? a CyGenics spokesperson tells Metro from Singapore.

Current cancer therapies successfully treat 50 per cent of patients, often with serious side-effects. The body?s T cells and natural killer (NK) cells need to be mobilised against the cancer. This mobilisation is done by dendritic cells, another specialised cell of the immune system.

These cells patrol the body in search of foreign cells such as cancer cells.

Once detected, the dendritic cells absorb part of the foreign cells? structure, and pass this information on to T cells and NK cells, which are then mobilised to kill the cells.

The PACRIMA project seeks to stimulate the patient?s own immune system to fight against cancer.

It seeks to explore whether CyGenics? patented three-dimensional cell culture platform, the Cytomatrix, is a suitable platform for growing antigen-specific T cells and NK cells, and whether these cells are suitable for therapeutic use.

CyGenics, from its pool of stem cells that have been donated for research, will also supply some of the stem cells from which all these cells ? dendritic cells, T cells, NK cells ? may be derived.

?If successful, this project would be a significant improvement over the current T cell culture platform,? feels Steven Fang, group CEO of CyGenics, who was present at the Calcutta facility announcement last month.