BHU scientist receives grant for start-up initiative in early diagnostic solutions

NEW DELHI: Banaras Hindu University (BHU), scientist at centre for genetics disorder, Garima Jain, received a stage one grant for her start-up initiative under the 'Amrit Grand Challenge Programme' called 'Jan Care' that is funded by the ministry of science and technology.

With knowledge in cancer genomics, Jain, the founder of start-up 'MirNOW' aims to improve patient care and outcomes through innovative diagnostic solutions. The start-up is working to create tests for early, actionable, and personalized diagnoses for cancer and cardiovascular diseases, with the goal of making these solutions accessible to all. This start-up seeks to identify new biomarkers and provide innovative healthcare solutions.

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Jan Care programme was launched by Government of India jointly with NASSCOM in collaboration with several partners from industry, investors, hospitals and incubator network among others. It aims to identify and support up to 75 healthcare innovations in various domains such as telemedicine and digital health. MirNOW is one of the 75 start-up innovations selected in this competition.

While speaking about her start-up, MirNOW, founder, Garima Jain said: "MirNOW is dedicated to the discovery, development, and delivery of early diagnostic solutions that can improve and save lives. We are excited to be able to showcase our work in JAN CARE and receive financial support and valuable feedback as we continue to refine and develop our products."

She further informed that the grant will be used to develop a diagnostic tool for predicting the malignancy of prostatitis that makes use of miRNA biomarkers and a machine learning-based algorithm.

Congratulating Jain on her achievement, BHU, Institute of Science, director, Anil Kumar Tripathi said: "For a country like India, we need many more scientists like Dr Garima who are enthusiastic about deploying advances in scientific knowledge for making healthcare affordable”.