KMCH Research Foundation, the research wing of Kovai Medical Center & Hospital has brought international recognition to India by securing best poster award among hundreds of posters presented by researchers all around the world at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia Congress 2025, held at Singapore during December 5 – 7, 2025.

Ms. Srinidhi Narayani Seenivasan, Ph.D. Research Scholar presented her work at ESMO Asia Congress. The presence of microbes in gut, oral cavity, skin and vagina is well explored and their role in human physiology is accepted. In this study, using next generation sequencing techniques, we investigated the presence of microbial DNA and its metabolites in 93 tumour and its adjacent tissues from breast cancer patients and showed evidence for presence of invisible, tiny microbes in breast cancer tissues, which are traditionally considered as sterile. Further understanding of the role of tissue microbiome in cancer development and response to treatments is in progress. Ms. Srinidhi’s 4 years of hard work was awarded with the best poster award and the highly competitive ESMO Travel Grant for it being the 1st report to reveal the association of microbial metabolites in breast tumour tissues with metastasis progression.

The Research team comprised of basic scientist – Dr. G. Velmurugan and clinical team from Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Kovai Medical Centre & Hospital including Dr Firoz Rajan and Dr. Ezhir Selvan Chidambarasamy, Surgical Oncologists and Pathology team led by Dr. Sangeetha Mehta along with scientists Dr. S. Mohanraj and Dr Arulraj Ramakrishnan at KMCH Research Foundation. This study was funded by Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) [formerly Science and Engineering Research Board], Government of India.

Dr. Nalla G. Palaniswami, Chairman and Founding Trustee opined that KMCH serves as one of the leading Indian clinical oncology centres providing advanced cancer treatment including robotic surgeries, precise adaptive radiotherapy and innovative immuno and cellular therapies like BiTE and CART-T cell therapy. He stated that KMCH research foundation was established to understand why Indian patients develop non-communicable diseases and Cancer with Western Data not extrapolatable always. He emphasized that the KMCH’s research activities add a new dimension to understanding of the root causes and mechanisms of diseases and contributes to research development in India with our research projects funded by ICMR/DBT/DST/ANRF working in collaboration with IIT Chennai and Foreign Universities.