Bengaluru’s deep-tech startup proposes ‘quantum’ leap in cancer care

Bengaluru: A Bengaluru-based bootstrapped deep-tech startup is leveraging quantum technology to detect cellular damage even before the symptoms appear in just hours, possibly changing the game for cancer care.

One among the 20-odd exhibitors at the recently concluded Quantum India Bengaluru Summit, Quantum Biosciences Private Limited’s “predictive tech” uses quantum biosensor to detect unique ‘magnetic fingerprints’ of oxidative stress in cells, allowing detection of tissue injury.

When his wife was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo radiation therapy, Ravi Puvvala, Managing Director of Quantum Biosciences, who was earlier developing sensors for automotive industry, said he started exploring the possibility of using sensors to predict radiation-induced cardiotoxicity before irreversible damage.

“Radiation therapy is essential for treating cancer. But it kills not only the cancerous cells, also the good ones. This leads to long-term complications such as fatigue, cognitive decline, organ dysfunction and secondary cancers. It also potentially induces a heart disease or fibrosis. I watched my wife suffer because of some of these side effects,” Puvvala told PTI.

Existing diagnostic tools, such as MRI, PET scans and blood biomarkers only detect harm after significant damage has already occurred, said Puvvala. “So, I wanted to use my experience in building sensors, and, you know, explore technology, understand how to optimise this particular problem,” added Puvvala.

He has been building technologies for the last 15 years, Puvvala said. Things took a quantum leap when he partnered with the Netherlands-based QT Sense, led by another Indian, Deepak Veeragowda.

QT Sense was formed to take forward the 15 years of academic research done in this area at the University of Groningen. QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova is a platform technology built for detecting quantum-level phenomena like subcellular free radicals and magnetic biomarkers.

“For the last two years, we have been researching various potential technologies for early stage diagnostics. We looked at classical sensors and quantum sensors, and we started quantum biosensors to leverage the potential of quantum sensors,” said Puvvala.

Puvvala said while quantum biosensors can tell us that there exists a certain amount of stress at the subcellular level, the next step would be to understand how to read them. “Further research is needed on how to map the cellular stress to a potential biomarker, only then we can say, okay, we made the prognosis,” added Puvvala.

At the first edition of the Quantum India Bengaluru Summit, Puvvala reached out to researchers and other key stakeholders – including the government of Karnataka, academic institutions, acute care clinicians, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals -- exploring this idea.

“To build this technology, we need a whole village. We need the engineering team, we need the medical team, and we need, you know, people like us, who can put all this together,” said Puvvala. According to him, they still need to do a lot of validation with respect to the sub cellular detection.

“For the first time we're able to actually go inside the cell and measure all kinds of things. But now we need to be able to make sense of what these measurements mean through clinical tests. So we need to conduct tests, and we need to be able to come up with a diagnostic mechanism,” said Puvvala.

To this end, Puvvala said they would be spending the next two years working with various hospitals, both in India and abroad. “We want to partner with cancer centres particularly, so we could get the necessary data,” said Puvvala.

Quantum Biosciences is at present incubating its foundational research capabilities at Center for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), an initiative of Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India and at Center for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) in Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, he added.

“We are also talking to other ecosystem leaders and state-level innovation programs to co-develop a shared infrastructure that bridges deep-science research with clinical applications,” said Puvvala.

When they go past the “very base-level mechanism”, the technology, said Puvvala, would benefit not only oncology, but also nephrology, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. It could even help India’s most basic struggle in providing health care, he added.

“One of the things I've heard at the conference is that most hospitals are overcrowded because the primary health care and the critical health care have been combined into one. The quantum biosensor could, you know, reduce the primary health care overload, by precisely identifying those cases that need critical care at a considerably lesser time,” said Puvvala.