Veterinary Nuclear Medicine

The College has established India’s first Veterinary Nuclear Medicine department, equipped with radio-pharmacy, single-head gamma camera with SPECT facility, various collimators, genie acquisition station and Entegra Processing station. The Department was inaugurated on 13th August 2004 at the hands of Minster of Animal Husbandry and Dairy and Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman Atomic Energy Commission, Government of India. Since then the Department has been growing steadily. The Department has standardized the procedures and is now regularly offering diagnostic scintigraphy services, such as, thyroid scan, Renal, hepatoportal shunt, MUGA, bone scans, scan for metastasis, gastric emptying, hepatic and spleen scans, to pet animal patients. More than 1200 pet patients have benefited from this service. The Department is also active in the field of drug development research, especially Novel Drug Delivery System (NDDS). Many institutes across the country are utilizing the facility of undertaking NDDS biodistribution studies in laboratory animals. In all 20 research students have availed scintigraphy facilities out of which 14 were from various institutes acrossIndia. Two industry-sponsored projects on tracing drug absorption have been competed. From the work done in the Department in collaboration with UICT, Mumbai, three patent on novel drug carrier ‘Lipomer’ has been filed and discussions are going on for licensing for commercialization. Currently the Department has one DBT-funded multi-centric research project on developing novel RES-targeted NDDS against human tuberculosis and is providing technical consultancy to two BRNS-funded projects to pharmacy institutes. The work at the Department has received several ‘Best Paper/Poster Awards’ in international and national conferences.
The Department provides diagnostic as well as drug development investigation facilities to various institutes and pharma industry in the country. Following services are available at the Department :
q Thyroid scintigraphy
q Gastro-esophageal reflux
q Gastric Emptying
q Bone scintigraphy/ metastasis
q Renal scintigraphy
q Hepatic / Spleen scintigraphy
q Hepatobiliary scintigraphy
q Testicular scintigraphy
q Cardiac scintigraphy (MUGA, Gallium)
q Iliac thrombosis / Vascular patency
For the pharmaceutical industry and institutes engaged in new drug development / Novel Drug Delivery System formulation following services are offered:
q Gastro-retentive / emptying studies
q Gastrointestinal drug release profile
q Colonic targeting
q Nasal to brain targeting
q Tumor targeting
q Rectal Drug Delivery
q Bio-distribution studies
q Intra-mammary drug release profile
q Scintikinetic studies
q Targeted Novel Drug Delivery System