BERHAMPUR: Nanotechnology will revolutionise the pharmaceutical world in the next decade.

Experts attending the AICTE-sponsored national seminar on `Innovative drug delivery systems' that was inaugurated at the Roland Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (RIPS) on Saturday said nanotechnology was going to be used extensively in the field of bio-sciences, including pharmaceutics.

Vice-Chancellor of Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) Omkarnath Mohanty, who was the chief guest at the inaugural function, elaborated the breakthroughs in the field of nanotechnology in different spheres of science, including biotechnology.

Nanotechnology is the creation and use of materials at extreme minute scales. These materials are of the size of 1 to 100 nanometers (nm).

At these dimensions, materials exhibit different physical properties. Speaking at the technical session, D. Rambhau, adviser and vice-president of NATCO, Hyderabad, described how nanonization of drug particles could improve the efficacy of drugs.

"Research is on for nanonization of anti-cancer drugs for their better absorption by the human body. Molecules that consist of about 30 atoms are only about 1 nm in diameter. Molecules, in turn, compose cells, the basic units of life. Human cells range from 5,000 to 200,000 nm in size, which means that they are larger than the nanoscale. However, proteins that carry out the internal operations of the cell are just 3 to 20 nm in size and so have nanoscale dimensions. It hints at the fact that at the nano-particle level drugs would have better absorption rate by the human body. Viruses that attack human cells are about 10 to 200 nm, and the molecules in drugs used to fight viruses are less than 5 nm in size ," Mr. Rambhau said. Experts from Calcutta University, Kakatiya University, Annamalai University, AUCPS, Vizag, are attending the two-day seminar. M. Bhanoji Rao, principal of RIPS, said seminars like this would prepare pharmacologists to adapt advancements in research in their field.

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