Representative image.

NEW DELHI: An all-woman team of researchers from Indian Institute of Technology , Delhi, has developed a new drug delivery platform using nanoparticles that can boost the efficacy of antibiotics at the cellular level and improve chances of recovery from cancer-related bacterial infections.

The research was published last month in Scientific Reports. The study team included Rohini Singh, Smita Patil, Neetu Singh and Shalini Gupta. The nanotechnology-based delivery system would be specifically useful for cancer patients because if the bacterial infection in cancer remains untreated, it can infect the host even after the cancer cells are killed by chemotherapy.

Antibiotics are convention al therapeutics used for the treatment of bacterial infections. However, 50% of these drugs are either not needed or not effectively utilised. Conventional antibiotics suffer from issues like improper biodistribution, poor water solubility, lack of target specificity and loss of efficacy.

“We have shown an efficient antibiotic targeting strategy that increases the antimicrobial efficacy and particle uptake for destroying intracellular bacteria, said Gupta.

