Life Science and Health Innovations Championed by Woman Researchers at ITB

July 12, 2018 - ( update : 12-07-2018 )

By Vera Citra Utami

Editor Vera Citra Utami

Indonesia is considered as one of the world’s richest nations in terms of its biodiversity. A large number of diverse species has been studied extensively by ITB’s researchers resulted in many innovative products to tackle food and health issues. Many research studies are championed by woman innovators at ITB. The innovations in life science and health technology have garnered serveral patents and awards such as L’Oreal Fellowship For Women in Scince, as well as research grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Among the L’Oreal Award recepient is Dr. Fenny Martha Dwivany. Her research in plant molecular biology is used to overcome post-harvest fruit problems. Indonesia faces issues in handling of fresh fruits. Fruit ripening process, such as in banana, is affected by gaseous phytohormone (ethelyne). This physiological characteristic leads to a fast ripening process and a short shelf-life. Several innovations to expand the banana shelf life have been developed by Dr Fenny and her team through molecular biology or nanotechnology approaches and have been subbmited as two ITB’s registered patents. These technologies will help both farmers and industries to increase agriculture’s production.

Prof. Tati Mengko, a leader in biomedical engineering research in Indonesia, nurtures promising cadre of woman innovators at ITB. Prof Mengko and her team, Amy Salman and Astri Handayani, developed several medical devices such as telemetric ECG, non-invasive vascular analyzer, smart stethoscope, and radar-based breast cancer detection. Prof Mengko team is also working on the community based eHealth. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as IEEE Foundation have awarded Yoke Irawan and Aliya Koesoema to work on anti-vaccine campaign and the use of ICT for disaster readiness.

Dr. Heni Rachmawati, a pioneer in pharmaceutical product innovation, has developed smart formulation for drug delivery to achieve a proper therapeutic effect for patient. Dr. Heni research innovations deal with drug release manipulation, selective and specific delivery, and promising noninvasive delivery system. Some of her innovations include curcumin nanoparticle for liver supplement, mlinjo nanoparticle for anti hyperurichemia as well as for whitening agent. Dr. Heni has successfully established a sustained delivery of bupivacaine HCl for local and extended anesthetic effect. As compared to their conventional formulations, these innovative approaches show better therapeutic value.

Woman innovators at ITB also worked to tackle infectious diseases. Dr. Azzania Fibriani, a L’Oreal Award recepient, works on the HIV innovations, while Dr. Ernawati A. Girri-Rachman works on the Hepatitis B issues. Dr. Azzania found that early HIV diagnosis is important to reduce mortality and improve treatment outcomes. Therefore, Dr. Azzania established the HIV in-house assay to be implemented in developing countries. Dr. Azzania also developed the new dimmer-based screening system that likely can be used to discover HIV new drugs candidates especially from Indonesian biodiversity resources. Dr. Ernawati and her team was recently awarded a grant to work in the development of Indonesian Hepatitis B Diagnostic kits which are based on ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent Assay). These developments have implications, not only for enhancing the research capacity, but also for strengthening the collaborative research to achieve the independence in fulfilling the needs of diagnostic kits in Indonesia.