Hyderabad varsity researchers develop nanomedicine for malaria treatment

Hyderabad varsity researchers develop nanomedicine for malaria treatment
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Highlights

Dr Pradip Paik, Associate Professor  from the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, the University of Hyderabad, and his team invented polymer-nanomedicine for treatment of malaria. Dr Paik is now on an assignment in the School of Biomedical Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in Varanasi. 

Hyderabad: Dr Pradip Paik, Associate Professor from the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, the University of Hyderabad, and his team invented polymer-nanomedicine for treatment of malaria. Dr Paik is now on an assignment in the School of Biomedical Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in Varanasi.

This exciting nanomedicine is efficient in controlling the Plasmodium falciparum infection. The nanomedicine has been prepared by using biodegradable porous polymeric nanocapsules capable of encapsulating frequently used medicine for treatment of malaria. It may be mentioned here that till date malaria is one of the most life-threatening ailments in humans with 212 million cases and 429,000 deaths yearly across the globe, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Among the four parasite species that infect humans 'Plasmodium falciparum' is the deadliest one. It is due to the widespread resistance to all the available drugs novel drug targets, new anti-malarial drugs or new drug delivery systems are urgently needed.

It is against this backdrop that Dr Paik’s research group has developed the new formulation of porous polymer capsules. They have shown excellent anti-malarial activity. This new drug delivery system is equipped with a “time-temperature clock” module, where the dosses for the treatment can be precisely tuned. Prof Paik reported that this new formulation is quite efficient in killing the P. falciparum infection in RBCs.

Dr Paik, who has pioneered this technique, has proposed that this system is unique and can be used further for animal trial. He said that Himadri Medhi, PhD scholar (UoH) has taken the main challenges to design this nanomedicine and perform this work along with the support of other PhD scholars namely, Somedutta Maity, Niranjan Suthram and Suresh Kumar Chalapareddy from the University of Hyderabad.

Dr Paik also highly acknowledged the help of one of the leading malaria biologist Prof. Mrinal Kanti Bhattacharyya of Department of Biochemistry, School of Life Sciences, UoH for testing the effect of the nanomedicine on the in vitro culture of human malarial parasite P. falciparum suppression studies.

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