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