Sathees Raghavan led scientists from four different institutions across India in the discovery of ESCR7 -five times more effective than award-winning drug SCR7A team of Indian researchers, led by a Bengaluru-based scientist, has significantly improved upon a cancer drug which they had earlier developed. The new cancer drug – the much-improved one – is now found to be at least five times more effective than its predecessor.The new anti-cancer drug, named ‘ESCR7’, is being considered as a potent weapon to boost the fight against cancer. In fact, its earlier form – SCR7 – was itself considered to be effective in treating different types of cancers in combination with chemotherapy and radiation treatment, according to Prof Sathees Raghavan, associate professor, IISc’s Department of Biochemistry, who led the research.Prof Raghavan, in fact, was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2013 for his and his group’s work that led to the discovery of SCR7 which was found to successfully bind to a protein found in mammals called Ligase IV that blocked the DNA repair pathway to cause cancers.Now the researchers have improved that very compound to give it much more punch to knock off cancers.The group, led by Prof Raghavan and Prof Jinu George, assistant professor in Department of Chemistry at Sacred Heart College Thevara at Kochi, modified the award-winning SCR7 by encapsu lating it in a polymer to deliver ESCR7.This they did by encapsulating the former in a nano-carrier to improve its bio-availability. Bioavailability is the proportion of a drug that enters the circulation when introduced into the body. In this case, they found the ESCR7 circulated more that the SCR7 and was found to be much more effective.“Encapsulation of drug in nano-sized carriers like polymers or artificially synthesised molecules help in easy transport of the drugs to target cells through the blood stream and also prevents the drug from getting degraded before being released,” said Supriya Vartak, from IISc and a co-author of the study, which has been published in the journal Macromolecular Bioscience.The encapsulation allowed use of smaller doses of the drug.SCR7 was encapsulated in a polymer known as “pluronic block copolymers” which increased its solubility in water, and therefore its bioavailability.The research group used different investigative biological procedures to arrive at the conclusion – that ESCR7 is at least five times more effective than its parent compound SCR7. The ESCR7 is found to be more efficient in binding with such cancer-causing proteins that block biochemical pathways that repair the DNA.The study was the result of collaboration between IISc, Sacred Heart College Thevara, Kochi, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, and KLE University, Bengaluru.