An all-women team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has developed a new drug delivery platform, using nanoparticles, which they say will more effectively target bacterial infections.
This is improving chances of recovery from cancer-related secondary infections.
The team consists of two faculty members - Neetu Singh from the Centre for Biomedical Engineering and Shalini Gupta from the Department of Chemical Engineering - and their students Smita Patil and Rohini Singh.
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.
The scientists are focusing not on mammalian cells, but on bacteria which slip into the cancer cells.
