IIT-Guwahati Develops Strategy To Deliver Chemo Drugs For Cancer Patients

GUWAHATI: Researchers at IIT-Guwahati have developed a new strategy to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs directly to the infected cells of a cancer patient, thereby significantly reducing side effects.

This research have created path-breaking results which have been published in prominent journals of The Royal Society of Chemistry including 'Chemical Communications' and 'Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry', said a statement.

The research papers have been co-authored by Prof. Debasis Manna, Department of Chemistry, IIT Guwahati, along with his research scholars Subhasis Dey, Anjali Patel, and Biswa Mohan Prusty, among others, it added.

Explaining it, professor Debasis Manna of the Department of Chemistry said the researchers had two needs in the development of chemotherapy drugs — it must be targeted at the cancer cells and must be released by an external trigger whenever it is required.

According to an  IIT- Guwahati statement, "The problem with existing chemotherapeutic drugs is that they kill healthy cells of the body in addition to cancerous cells, leading to numerous undesirable side effects,"

In fact, it is believed that cancer deaths are as much due to the side effects of chemotherapy as the disease itself, it added. "There is worldwide research to overcome the drawbacks of secondary toxicity of chemotherapeutic drugs. Some strategies that are being explored include target-specific delivery of the drugs and on-demand delivery of appropriate drug doses to cancerous cells and tissues," it said.

Anticancer activities were carried out in collaboration with Prof. Siddhartha Sankar Ghosh and Plaboni Sen from IIT Guwahati and Prof. Arindam Bhattacharyya and Soumya Chatterjee from Calcutta University.

Worldwide research has been done which shows there are numerous ways to overcome the drawbacks of secondary toxicity of chemotherapeutic drugs. Some strategies that are being explored include target-specific delivery of the drugs and on-demand delivery of appropriate drug doses to cancerous cells/tissues.

To meet the above needs, the molecule developed by the research team has four special features.

• The first feature is that the molecules assemble to form hollow spherical shells in water These shells that are ten-millionth of a meter in size and can be used as a minuscule container for the drug molecule

• The second characteristic is that the molecule has a part (the acetazolamide ligand) that specifically binds to cancer cells and not normal cells

• The third feature of the molecule is that it has a photocleavable linker moiety that is responsive to infrared light and breaks the shell when exposed to IR

• The molecule also contain a dye moiety (cyanine-3) which is also useful for both fluoresce and scattering-based imaging to visually monitor the entire process

Thus, the molecules developed by the IIT-G researchers self-assemble as capsules to hold the drug, which then attaches only to cancer cells.

When infrared light is shone on it, the shell breaks and releases the encapsulated drug into the cancerous cell.

The IIT-G scientists rightly believe that their approach would allow the development of drug carriers for chemotherapy with enhanced efficacy and negligible side effects.

The premier technical institute said that the societal impacts of this work cannot be overstated given the number of cancer patients in India anticipated to be 30 million by 2025.

The researchers believe that the development of target-specific, light-responsive, self-imaging macrocyclic lipids such as those they've developed could help in image-guided chemotherapeutic applications.

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