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Fighting drug-resistant virus, bacteria, full time

BENGALURU: India may well be the place where the drug to fight the killer Ebola virus originates, with two drug candidates discovered in Bengaluru among the first 20 to be evaluated in the UK for efficacy against deadly virus. Efforts are on world over, including the UK, to create compounds and molecules that can fight Ebola, but Bengaluru’s contribution will make India the only developing nation to have done any serious work.The two novel compounds or drug candidates have been developed by Dr Jayanta Haldar from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and two of his students – Chandra Dhish Ghosh and Mohini Mohan Konai. Haldar has been working on drugs that can fight drug-resistant virus, bacteria and other parasites.Speaking to the TOI from his lab in JNCASR, Haldar said: “The two Indian drug candidates which we’ve codenamed NCK-8 and D-LANA-14 are lead candidates from two classes of peptide mimics (a molecule global researchers have created to fight the virus) with high activity against a range of multi-drug resistant bacteria and malarial parasites, including clinical isolates.”Stating that he cannot disclose the exact materials used in NCK-8 and D-LANA given that they are “novel discoveries”, Haldar said: “They are made in three steps with easily available and inexpensive starting materials which do not require any difficult conditions for synthesis.”He said currently there is a lot of interest on peptide mimics. “...And we hope to work with PHE over time to evaluate and develop all our anti-microbial mimics, including these two lead candidates that have entered the first round of screening against Ebola.”Stating that this is a priority project, Haldar said: “The in-vitro tests will begin mid-January next year. We'll need about 2.5-3 months to see how it is working, following which the in-vigo tests will begin, which will be followed by clinical studies and talks with pharmaceutical companies.”Supported by an award from the Wellcome Trust, Public Health England (PHE) scientists are evaluating potential treatment options in their high-containment laboratories at Porton Down, Wiltshire, to determine the most viable candidates for further development.PHE senior business development manager Dr Seshadri Vasan, who is one of the co-investigators of the project, said: “We have a track record of scientific innovation and development, and this funding from Wellcome Trust will allow us to utilise our experience and expertise to assist in the fight against Ebola.”Dr Jayanta Haldar seems to have made it a full time job to fight drug-resistant virus, bacteria, parasites among other things that spread infections.In July this year, Haldar and his students – Venkateswarlu Yarlagadda, Padma Akkapeddi and Goutham B Manjunath – had invented a novel way of solving the problem of such resistance from bacteria.Their method to attack these bacteria, allows the organisms little chance of developing resistance. TOI had reported the story first under the title ‘Bangalore scientists break bacteria's resistance to antibiotics’.Haldar’s research had found ways to break the bacteria in a non-traditional way, affecting their ability to adapt or develop resistance. “Antibiotics today attack different processes of bacteria. And, due to reckless overuse of the drugs, bacteria, through mutations, develop ways of resisting the medicines, thereby, increasing their own ability to harm our bodies. “...What our antibiotic does is that it attacks the cell membrane, the Achilees’ heel of bacteria, killing their ability to adapt,” Haldar said.