Arun Sreenivasan, New Delhi (Pharmabiz.com)

 A path-breaking drug delivery system using nanotechnology, developed by a team of scientists at Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB) at Faridabad, would radically upgrade cancer therapy in the country and may dramatically boost the number of potent therapeutic agents. The groundbreaking discovery – a new ray of hope for millions of cancer patients in India -- is validated at laboratory stage and ready to be transferred to the industry for commercial application. “It’s a vehicle for delivery of predominantly anti-cancer drugs either in encapsulated or conjugated pattern in nanoparticle forms. Unlike the drug delivery systems currently available in the market, this technology ensures a fourfold enhancement in bioavailability, which means three times higher drug concentration at tumor site. And all this is achieved with lesser toxicity owing to low drug concentration in circulation,” Dr Avinash Bajaj, Associate Professor at RCB and a prominent member of the team that developed the system, told Pharmabiz. The innovative system is highly effective in the treatment of cancers affecting stomach, breast, lungs, prostrate and neck. RCB has handed over the know-how to Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), a public sector company promoted by the Department of Biotechnology, to facilitate its speedy commercialisation. According to sources, a handful of companies have already evinced interest in it and talks with BCIL for technology transfer are at an advanced stage. The inventors have exploited the potential of nanotechnology to develop a delivery system that can substantially reduce drug toxicity in chemotherapy patients. The lipid-based nanoparticle-drug formulation is aggregated in supra-molecular form to attain different structural assemblies which is useful in target specific drug delivery. While doing so, the researchers have overcome the problem of delivery, toxic nature and insufficient retention time of hydrophobic and hydrophilic cancer drugs using a lipid-based formulation. Enhanced drug entrapment is achieved in less than an hour through a simple and single step without any special equipment for synthesis. “We have conducted numerous animal studies to check the validity of the invention. It was checked in mice, rabbits and rhesus monkeys. In fact, this is the first time in India that a drug delivery system’s efficacy is tested in monkeys. The results were extremely impressive,” Dr Bajaj, who has done is post-doctoral work at the University of Massachusetts, pointed out. According to inventors, the nanotechnology-based system’s uses are not restricted to cancer treatment alone. It can be used for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections, diabetes and many inflammatory ailments. Nanoparticulate technology is proving to be a boon for cancer patients worldwide as it allows effective and targeted drug delivery by overcoming the many biological, biophysical and biomedical barriers that the body stages against a standard drug intervention. These minute particles act as a carrier for entry through fenestrations in tumor vasculature allowing direct cell access. This results in delivery of high drug concentrations to the targeted cancer cell, with reduced toxicity of normal tissue. Established by the Department of Biotechnology under the auspices of UNESCO, RCB focuses on shared biotechnology growth in the Asia-Pacific region. It is part of the Biotech Science Cluster and operates in synergy with the other institutions in the Cluster.