Cancer

Cancer treatment has been a crucial need of current time and necessitates the need for effective strategies that facilitates superior transfection and endosomal escape ability and enhances intracellular availability of therapeutics. Taking this into consideration, our lab is involved in design and synthesis of novel amphiphilic cationic heterolipids for fabrication of solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructures lipid complexes, SMEDDs and lipomers for delivery of therapeutics viz. anticancer drugs and gene silencing agents. Our studies have revealed not only a significant enhancement in intracellular uptake but also improved biopharmaceutical issues related to non-site specific drug delivery and reduced treatment associated toxicity. These smart nanocarriers have proven to be promising strategy for better cancer therapy. 

Affibody molecules are a class of engineered affinity proteins with potential for therapeutic, diagnostic and biotechnological applications. These are small 58 amino acid residues with 3 α helices structure and lack disulfide bridges. The original affibody protein scaffold was designed based on the Z domain (the immunoglobulin G binding domain) of protein A. They can bind to a large number of target proteins or peptides with high affinity from micromolar to picomolar range. Because of their high specificity and affinity for its target, rapid biodistribution and tissue penetration as well as rapid clearance of unbound tracer, they seems to be more promising for active targeting in diseases like cancer. Our group is working on developing affibodies against cancer.