Amala Cancer Research Centre is an integral part of Amala Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) situated amidst of 40 acres of green landscape in the valley of Vilangan Hills, 8 KM from Thrissur town. The Research Centre with its remarkable facility and expertise in cancer research has shown its excellence during the last 30 years. The Centre has four floors with 12,000 sq.ft. floor area in each floor. Centre has almost all the facilities for doing excellent research in the area of biochemistry, immunology, microbiology, biotechnology, molecular biology and radiation biology. This includes five main laboratories, animal house with three strains of mice and two strains of rats and rabbits. It also has instrument room, preparative room, reading room, conference room, library in the adjacent building, computer room, tissue culture room, virology lab, plant tissue culture facility, radiotracer laboratory and microbiology lab etc. Centre has also adequate instruments either indigenously made or imported including gamma and beta radioactive counter, gel documentation systems, thermal cyclers, medium and high performance liquid chromatography systems, elisa reader, cold lab, high speed refrigerated centrifuges, electronic balances, incubators, refrigerators, ovens, water distillation units and many minor equipments required for the proper functioning of the research laboratories.

Library has most of the books needed for the research activities of the Centre and subscribe to nearly 76 Indian and 34 foreign journals costing nearly 11 lakhs and books worth of 2 lakhs is being added every year and internet accession of journals are also available.

During the last few years centre has been mainly involved in the area of research on herbal medicines useful in cancer treatment. Due to the side effects of modern medicines, many patients are now a days turning to traditional medicines for several illness including cancer. However, the scientific data on the usefulness of these medicines are not available. Hence, the documentation of these data is the main area in which research is going on in the Centre. Centre has several cancer models in small animals for growing transplanted tumours and induction of cancer by carcinogenesis method. Centre has also programme to find out novel drugs for preventing cancer, protecting from radiation damage as well as drugs that can inhibit metastasis and angiogenesis. All these studies are being done with either in vitro on culture or in vivo in animal models.

Other areas of work involved inflammation, antimicrobials, antifungals as well as cholesterol reducing drugs. Centre has facility to identify hepatoprotective drugs and renal protective drugs using animal models. Centre also has an active programme to identify drugs from natural sources, which can modulate immunity useful in immunosuppression produced in cancer and AIDS. Centre has been testing the effect of an anti-HIV preparation for the last 12 years and the results are highly encouraging. Centre has facility to produce tissue culture plants as well as prepare secondary metabolites from the plant tissue culture useful in cancer. Moreover, centre has also facility to undertake sponsored research work for testing of chemicals and isolated phytochemicals for their toxicity in small animals as well as to determine their pharmacological mechanism of action using in vitro and in vivo. The usual activities of the Centre is summarised as follows.

Centre conducts a weekly seminar to discuss various aspects of cancer research. Other than these seminars, Centre invites several eminent scientists to deliver lectures on contemporary areas of research in our Centre. Centre also encourages their staff and students to attend important seminars and symposia in India and abroad. Moreover, it is the policy of the centre that the students should attend and present papers in at least minimum three national meeting before they complete of their Ph D degree.