New approach to drug delivery
GS PAPER II: Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
Context: New approach to drug delivery combines biologics and antibody-drug conjugates.
More information about it:
- A type of nanoparticle designed by researchers from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the U.S., embodies a new approach to treating diseases that could potentially revolutionise the field.
- This could have impact on incurable diseases, so-called undruggable ones like pancreatic cancer.
- This combines concepts of biologics and antibody–drug conjugates to produce protein–antibody conjugates that can be used for targeted drug delivery – in the case of pancreatic cancer cells.
Protein–Antibody Conjugates
- It combines two different approaches to drug delivery.
- One is biologics, where the idea is to target a defective protein in the system by delivering proteins to it. An example of this is the case of insulin treatment. If a person is short of insulin, which is a protein, they are given a shot of this protein which balances the system.
Antibody conjugates
- The other concept is of using antibodies for drug delivery.
- Antibodies are something the body produces to detect a foreign substance inside the body.
- If there is something different on the surface of a cancer cell compared to a healthy cell, we can design the antibody that selectively goes to the cancer cell.
- Drug molecules can be attached to the antibody, forming drug–antibody conjugates.
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