Relevance: GS-3: Achievements of Indians in Science & Technology; Indigenization of Technology and Developing New Technology, Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.
Key phrases: Targeted Drug Delivery System (TDDS), Nano-therapeutic Drug Delivery Systems (NDDS)
Why in news?
- IIT Delhi has developed a new technology for chemotherapy applications
Analysis:
What is chemotherapy?
- Chemotherapy is one of the three prominent cancer treatment strategies. The other two being radiation and surgery.
- The long-term use of conventional drug delivery systems for cancer chemotherapy leads to fatal damage of normal cells.
- A targeted drug delivery system (TDDS) is a system, which releases the drug at a preselected biosite in a controlled manner.
- Nanotechnology based delivery systems are making a significant impact on cancer treatment.
Issues with conventional chemotherapy
- High-dose requirements,
- Adverse side effects,
- Low therapeutic indices,
- Development of multiple drug resistance,
- Non-specific targeting,
- Poor bioavailability,
- The new technology developed by IIT Delhi aims to address this issue.
What is the technology about?
- The method utilises the body's own cells to load multiple drugs at the same time and reach tumour sites in significant concentrations.
- The idea is to control nature’s own oxygen delivery vehicle, the RBCs, to deliver drugs inside the body.
- The RBCs are engineered in the lab to produce smaller (nano sized) biocompatible vesicles.
- Drug molecules can simply be trapped inside the particle’s lipid bilayer and circulate for a longer time.
- The process uses RBCs long circulating nature to address the challenges associated with drug delivery for a prolonged period of time.
- The technology was validated in an animal system lab in collaboration with a researcher from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
What are its benefits?
- It is expected to minimise side-effects on patients undergoing chemotherapy.
- The few synthetic nanoparticles currently being used in nanomedicine suffer from short circulation times and are often associated with non-specific toxicity. The new technology is free from these issues.
What is Targeted Drug-Delivery Systems (TDDS):
- The basic principle behind drug targeting is delivering a high concentration of drug to the targeted site while minimizing its concentration to the non-targeted region.
- This principle aids in optimizing the drug’s therapeutic effects while decreasing the side effects due to multi-target interactions, higher doses, and non-target concentrations.
- Targeting also ameliorates unwanted interactions of the drug with bioenvironmental factors that affect drug access to targeted sites in the body.
Way ahead
- Achieving complete control over the physical and chemical properties of a synthetic system is challenging. It needs more research.
- Developing strategies to tune vesicles for various applications is a challenging task.
Source: Science Reporter
