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.

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/new-approach-to-drug-delivery-combines-biologics-and-antibody-drug-conjugates/article34567448.ece