Living up to his promise made nearly four years ago, a US-based Indian and IT entrepreneur on Friday came to his alma-mater Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here to launch a research centre for biosciences and bio-engineering with the focus on cancer.

An alumnus of the 1969 batch of IIT, Romesh Wadhwani, founder of Symphony Technology Group and chairman of Wadhwani Foundation, along with his wife Kathy and IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar, inaugurated the Wadhwani Research Centre in Biosciences & Bioengineering (WRCBB) at the IIT-Bombay campus on Friday.

The WRCBB follows a generous gift of US$ 5 million announced by Wadhwani in 2008 in New York, towards the project, designed to focus on understanding cell motility and cancer invasion.

The IIT-B's Faculty of Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering will be affiliated to the WRCBB for the research projects, said Khakhar.

He said the Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering is relatively a young department but has already achieved recognition for its research excellence in multiple areas.

These include -- cancer cell biology, signalling mechanisms in immune cells, computational biology, computational neurobiology, bio-nanotechnology, biosensors and drug delivery systems, among others.

In addition, WRCBB will focus on understanding cell motility and cancer invasion as its research area with the ultimate goal to build a better knowledge base in this field.

"WRCBB intends to have top-class faculty conduct cutting edge research using latest in emerging technologies with the sole purpose of changing lives for the better all over the world," Khakhar said.