NANO-PHARMACEUTICALS

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Why in News?

  • The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released guidelines for evaluation of nano-pharmaceuticals, which are emerging as more potent tools for treating various diseases.

What are Nano-Pharmaceuticals?

 

  • Nanopharmaceuticals represent an emerging field where the sizes of the drug particle or a therapeutic delivery system work at the nanoscale.
  • They are derived by application of nanotechnology in medical therapeutics.
    In the pharmaceutical industry, a long-standing issue is a difficulty of delivering the appropriate dose of a particular active agent to specific disease site.
  • Nanopharmaceuticals have enormous potential in addressing this failure of traditional therapeutics which offers site-specific targeting of active agents.
    Such precision targeting via nanopharmaceuticals reduces toxic systemic side effects, resulting in better patient compliance.

Benefits:

  • They are expected to bring about a revolution in treatment strategies as they would enable targeting specific delivery of drugs and therapeutic molecules.
    They offer higher efficacy and lower toxicity in many disease conditions.
    They are expected to be of great use particularly in cancer treatment.

Why Need Guidelines?

  • Every year several new nano-pharmaceuticals are being developed and marketed across the world.
  • India too has a sizable pool of nano-scientists generating a large number of scientific publications in this domain.
  • However, regulatory approval is the most important factor for translating laboratory research into bedside medicine.
  • The new set of guidelines is designed to facilitate this process.

Guidelines:

  • The guidelines cover all the aspects of evaluation from the definition and categorization of nano-pharmaceuticals to pharmacovigilance of the new set of therapeutics.
  • It has been prepared as a joint project by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in the Union Ministry of Science and Technology lavagabonddame, and ICMR and Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation under health Ministry.
  • It will give a big boost to innovators and drug manufacturers to optimise their research and come out with medicines that would be safer and more affordable.
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