In India, medical research has concentrated on communicable diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. Cancer research is still at a preliminary stage and most research centres have focused on the epidemiology of the disease or developing better surgery and radiotherapy techniques.

Some laboratories, like the Cancer Research Institute at the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) in Bombay, have initiated programmes on the more basic aspects of cancer. M G Oeo, director of the TMC institute, and his colleague Rita Muiherkar recently isolated a gene from the small intestine of the mouse, which codes for a protein that aids wound-healing and tumour growth. The scientists deciphered the sequence of the gene and filed this information with the London-based European Molecular Biology Laboratory database.

Considerable research has been done on oral cancer, which is widely prevalent in India. Scientists have found that the genetic changes in Indian oral cancer patients appear to be different from those observed in the developed world. TMC scientists discovered that when chewing tobacco - a major carcinogen - is mixed with lime, it generates reactive oxygen atoms which damage the DMA, causing gene mutations.

At the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, M R Das and his colleagues identified a process that leads to liver tumours. The team also found that the hepatitis C virus plays a role in certain types of liver cancer.

Along the more conventional approaches to cancer therapy, radiation oncologists are looking for efficient cures for common cancers. For example, doctors at the Ail India Institute of Medical Sciences (A1IMS) in New Delhi increased the cure rate of head-and-neck cancer cases from 30 per cent to 60 per cent and of oesophagus cancer cases from 10 per cent to 43 per cent by using effective radiotherapy.

Recently, G K Rath and his colleagues at the department of radiation oncology at AIIMS, in collaboration with the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in New Delhi, developed a method to treat brain tumours, combining radiotherapy and chemotherapy. They found that a modified glucose compound inhibits the transport of glucose to malignant cells, starving them. The new therapy is being tested along with radiotherapy in clinical trials.