PERTUZUMAB Advancing in HER2-Positive Breast Cancer

PERTUZUMAB ADVANCING IN HER2 POSITIVE BREAST CANCER

Breast cancer is a diverse disease with varying clinical presentations, morphologic features, and molecular characteristics. It is influenced by various genetic pathways and is a major trend in breast cancer care. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is a major trend, requiring integrated multidisciplinary care from pathologists, radiologists, surgeons, and oncologists. Anti-HER2 therapy has improved clinical results for HER2-positive breast cancer patients.

Pertuzumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody, targets the extracellular dimerization domain of HER2, inhibiting downstream signaling and cell survival pathways. It is used in conjunction with trastuzumab and docetaxel to treat HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. In addition to directly encouraging the death of cancer cells, monoclonal antibodies also trigger immunological activation, which is deadly to tumour cells.

Pertuzumab possesses the capability to elicit immune effector responses, including cell-mediated cytotoxicity that is dependent on antibodies. The antibody targets the PI3K/AKT and RAS/MEK/ERK pathways, protecting normal cells from suicide. It can activate immunological effector mechanisms, such as antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Trastuzumab and pertuzumab function in complementary ways, highlighting the importance of understanding the biology of this devastating disease. This blog focuses on the mechanism of pertuzumab in patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant treatment.

Engineered Nanoparticles for the Delivery of Anticancer Therapeutics

Engineered Nanoparticles for the Delivery of Anticancer Therapeutics

Therapeutic agents in cancer treatment are aimed at rapidly dividing cells, limiting their multiplication, and promoting apoptosis. The lack of selectivity of these conventional methods resulted in needless damage to normal cells leading to severe adverse effects. Nanotechnology in medicine gratifies the constraint in conventional treatment by delivering conventional drugs to the targeted tissue or organ and plays an important role in targeting the delivery, thereby avoiding systemic toxicity and increasing the bioavailability and therapeutic index of the drug. The advantage of using nanoparticles as drug carriers are in their binding competence and reversing multidrug resistance. Using active and passive targeting strategies, nanoparticles enhance intracellular drug concentrations. The present review focuses the on the basic pathophysiology of cancer and the various types of nanoparticulate drug delivery systems that have been explored so far, taking advantage of the tumor vasculature and other molecular mechanisms which differentiates cancer cells from normal ones, for the delivery of anticancer therapeutics for effective management of cancer. The article also aims to focus on the various surface-engineered nanoparticles for the targeted delivery of cancer.

Growing Complex Injectable Portfolio in the Indian Generic Industries

The Indian pharmaceutical industry has seen an exponential growth in the field of fill finished dosage forms, especially generics but the future lies beyond generics in the field of complex generics, biosimilairs, vaccines and New Chemical Entities (NCE)/New Biological Entities (NBE). Developing NCEs and NBEs will position Indian companies in the ivy league of global innovators. Risk adverseness, lack of perseverance and complex, long regulatory approval process are impeding Indian pharma companies to venture into NCE/NBE research. Product portfolio expansion into complex generic injectables is an attractive high-return alternative for the Indian generic pharmaceutical industries.

Anti-programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibodies – Latest trend in Immunotherapy

PD1

Cancer is a primary leading disease for mortality in the world. Immunotherapy is the latest trend for curing cancer and thus biopharmaceutical industry has developed a keen interest and manufactured several drug products such as monoclonal antibodies for immunotherapy. Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 (PD-1) evades immune response and promotes self-tolerance by modulating the activity of T-cells, activating apoptosis of antigen-specific T cells, and inhibiting apoptosis of regulatory T-cells. On the other hand, Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) is a trans-membrane protein and it’s a co-inhibitory factor of the immune response1. Cancer Immunotherapy has been designed to increase the specificity and strength of the immune system against cancer.  James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering a cancer treatment by suppressing negative immunomodulation.