Dr. Pradip Paik, Associate Professor (on Lien) of the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, University of Hyderabad presently on an assignment as Associate Professor of School of Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, and his research group have invented a new polymer-nanomedicine for treatment of Malaria. This exciting nanomedicine is efficient for acuity of controlling the P. falciparum infection, which has been prepared using biodegradable porous polymeric nanocapsules capable of encapsulating frequently used medicine for treatment of malaria.
Till today Malaria is one of the most life threatening ailments in human which causes annually about 212 million cases and 429,000 deaths across the globe according to WHO. Among the four parasite species that infect humans Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest one. Due to the widespread resistance to all the available drugs novel drug targets, new anti-malarial drugs or new drug delivery system are urgently needed.
Dr. Paik’s research group has developed a new formulation of porous polymer capsules with commonly used antimalarial drugs that has shown excellent anti-malarial activity. This new drug delivery system is equipped with a “time-temperature clock” module, where the dosses for the treatment can be precisely tuned. Prof. Paik reported that this new formulation is quite efficient in killing the P. falciparum infection in RBCs. Dr. Paik, who is the pioneer in this technique, has proposed that this system is very unique and can be used further for animal trial. Dr. Paik mentioned that Himadri Medhi, Ph.D. scholar (UoH) has taken the main challenges to design this nanomedicine and perform this work along with the support of other Ph.D. scholars namely, Somedutta Maity (UoH), Niranjan Suthram (UoH) and Suresh Kumar Chalapareddy (UoH).
Dr. Paik highly acknowledges the help of one of the leading malaria biologist Prof. Mrinal Kanti Bhattacharyya of Department of Biochemistry, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad for testing the effect of the nanomedicine on the in vitro culture of human malarial parasite P. falciparum suppression studies.
Dr. Paik can be reached on email: pradip.paik@gmail.com