IIT Guwahati has developed a drug carrier that will safely deliver drugs to cancerous cells.

The premier institute said on Monday that 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 researchers believe their approach would allow the development of drug carriers for chemotherapy with “enhanced efficacy and negligible side effects”.

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.

IIT Guwahati researchers are now “preparing to perform” in vivo studies (on living organism) to take this understanding closer to drug development.

Given that the number of cancer patients in India is anticipated to be 30 million by 2025, the development of effective chemotherapeutic drugs and delivery systems is critical and its significance cannot be overstated.

The Northeast alone contributes about 45,000 cancer cases every year of which Assam alone contributes about 34,000 cases.

The IIT-G said the “path-breaking” results of the ongoing research had been published in prestigious journals of The Royal Society of Chemistry, including Chemical Communications and Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.

The research papers have been co-authored by Prof. Debasis Manna, department of chemistry in IIT Guwahati, along with research scholars Subhasis Dey, Anjali Patel, and Biswa Mohan Prusty, among others.

“Anti-cancer activities were carried out in collaboration with Prof. Siddhartha Sankar Ghosh and Plaboni Sen from the IIT Guwahati and Prof. Arindam Bhattacharyya and Soumya Chatterjee from Calcutta University…” the IIT-G said.

Explaining his research, Prof. Debasis Manna, said: “We have two needs in the development of chemotherapy drugs — the drug must be targeted at the cancer cells, the drug must be released by an external trigger whenever it is required… Our approach would allow the development of drug carriers for chemotherapy with enhanced efficacy and negligible side effects.”