His week begins with blood. Every Monday, Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee arrives early at his Columbia University lab to stare through the microscope at slides of red. Waiting very much in Shakespearean fashion for his patient's blood to speak to him.
We speak on a Thursday. Mukherjee is in his loft in New York, making a sandwich and promoting his new book The Song of The Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and The New Human. It is his fourth book, the earlier ones being The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (which won him a Pulitzer), The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science and The Gene: An Intimate History. Its arrival in stores is very much a worldwide publishing event.
The next two months are big for Mukherjee, for his various identities of oncologist, scientist, writer, and now entrepreneur. Book aside, in December, he flies to Bengaluru to assess the results of a CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cell trial for cancer. His laboratory, which has a reputation for cancer research, is responsible for starting one of India's first clinical trials of T-cell therapy.
AT cell is a kind of white blood cell. "A CAR T cell is a T cell that has been weaponised against cancer," he says. "It is a process that can be highly effective in curing patients, but it is also very dangerous."
Immuneel Therapeutics, the Bengaluru-based company that Mukherjee and Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw started, is working towards a treatment that will cost far less than treatments in the US. It has recently raised $15 million. IIT Bombay and Tata Memorial are also doing similar trials; theirs is in phase one, and Immuneel is in phase two.
Denne historien er fra November 06, 2022-utgaven av THE WEEK India.
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Denne historien er fra November 06, 2022-utgaven av THE WEEK India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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William Dalrymple goes further back
Indian readers have long known William Dalrymple as the chronicler nonpareil of India in the early years of the British raj. His latest book, The Golden Road, is a striking departure, since it takes him to a period from about the third century BC to the 12th-13th centuries CE.
The bleat from the street
What with all the apps delivering straight to one’s doorstep, the supermarkets, the food halls and even the occasional (super-expensive) pop-up thela (cart) offering the woke from field-to-fork option, the good old veggie-market/mandi has fallen off my regular beat.
Courage and conviction
Justice A.M. Ahmadi's biography by his granddaughter brings out behind-the-scenes tension in the Supreme Court as it dealt with the Babri Masjid demolition case
EPIC ENTERPRISE
Gowri Ramnarayan's translation of Ponniyin Selvan brings a fresh perspective to her grandfather's magnum opus
Upgrade your jeans
If you don’t live in the top four-five northern states of India, winter means little else than a pair of jeans. I live in Mumbai, where only mad people wear jeans throughout the year. High temperatures and extreme levels of humidity ensure we go to work in mulmul salwars, cotton pants, or, if you are lucky like me, wear shorts every day.
Garden by the sea
When Kozhikode beach became a fertile ground for ideas with Manorama Hortus
RECRUITERS SPEAK
Industry requirements and selection criteria of management graduates
MORAL COMPASS
The need to infuse ethics into India's MBA landscape
B-SCHOOLS SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT INDIAN ECONOMY IS GOING TO WITNESS A TREMENDOUS GROWTH
INTERVIEW - Prof DEBASHIS CHATTERJEE, director, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
COURSE CORRECTION
India's best b-schools are navigating tumultuous times. Hurdles include lower salaries offered to their graduates and students misusing AI
