Eminent Indian physicist and well known spectroscopist Professor Vinod V K Rastogi is in Bulgaria to lecture on various subjects including the nature of specific anti-cancer drugs.

While cancer remains a number one killer throughout the world, the search for a cure remains as elusive as ever. Back in the 1960s the American Cancer Foundation used to display posters promising to cure it "in our lifetimes". This has not proved possible because the disease we speak of as cancer is, in fact, a variety of different illness.

In Rastogi's words: "It is a collection of more than 300 types of disorders characterised by the uncontrolled growth and proliferation of abnormal cells".

This, Rastogi's second visit to Sofia, falls under the Indo-Bulgarian bilateral government exchange programme. He is currently working with Dr Irena Kostova, Medical University, Faculty of Pharmacy on a project entitled vibrational spectroscopic investigation of potential anti-cancerous compounds with special reference to anticancer drug: 5-Fluorouracil"

Rastogi is a scientist with a special interest relating to the treatment of cancer patients, in other words his business is treatment rather than prevention, although as a vegetarian he has ideas of his own about a healthy lifestyle.
His explicit interest lies in the components of certain anti-cancer drugs.  

"In many cases, the cancer cannot be completely controlled by surgical intervention so multidisciplinary treatment including chemotherapy must be used. But the main problem is that when the drug is inserted to the body, often the cancer cells acquire the drug resistance and therefore after some time the efficiency of the drug is reduced." Sadly, this can also lead to side effects that undermine the patient's quality of life and even contribute to their ultimately death.

Rastogi has now set himself the goal of designing a new drug that proves more effective in tackling cancer, or at least one to which the cancer cells do not acquire a resistance. To this end, Rastogi makes use of Raman Spectroscopy as an experimental technique.

Rastogi's visit was officially organised by the Foundation Devam-Indo Bulgarian Society for Arts and Culture, based in Sofia and headed by Mona Kaushik. The foundation organises reciprocal visits of scientists, intellectuals and artists between India and Bulgaria.