New Mechanism in Making Drugs May Help Overcome Multi-Drug Resistance

One of the challenging problems in the development of drugs is drug resistance. Researchers have now developed a new approach to develop highly-potent drugs which could overcome current shortcomings of low drug efficacy and multi-drug resistance in patients. Scientists identified a new mechanism of targeting multi-subunit complexes that are critical to the function of viruses, bacteria or cancer. Thus, this mechanism will reduce or possibly even eliminate their resistance to targeted drugs.

Peixuan Guo, director of Britain’s Nanobiotechnology Center and one of the top nanobiotechnology experts in the world, said, "Efficacy is the key in drug development. Inhibiting multisubunit targets works similar to the series-circuit Christmas decorating light chains; one broken bulb turns off the entire lighting system."

By targeting RNA, this new method allows for killing or disabling the RNA or protein without requiring the inhibition of multiple pathways that might be used by the organism to remain active and viable. Using this method, a single subunit targeting to the target RNA or protein subunits that is unique and assenting for the organism, the organism will be disabled or die and thus, no longer be able to cause disease.

Tim Tracy, former Dean of the UK College of Pharmacy and current UK provost, said, "Guo’s study has identified a new mechanism of efficiently inhibiting biological processes that are critical to the function of the disease-causing organism, such that resistance is minimized or eliminated."

The study appeared in Nanomedicine.

Source-IANS