Dr. Indrajeet Sharma, a scientist from India who works in the United States, is becoming well-known for his important medical research. He is working on ways to make treatments better for diseases like cancer, tuberculosis, and problems with the brain and nerves. Dr. Sharma, who got his PhD from the University of Illinois in Chicago, is in charge of a team that is developing a new method for creating and improving medicines.

New method to enhance drug development

Dr. Sharma and his team are studying how to use nitrogen atoms to make drugs work better. Nitrogen is important in making medicines and is part of many drugs that are already approved. In their work, they use a chemical called sulfenylnitrene to add nitrogen atoms into molecules. This makes the molecules become "new" and more useful for making medicines. The method they use is called skeletal editing, which allows them to add nitrogen atoms without changing the main function of the drug but making it work better.

This technique draws inspiration from the work of Sir Derek Barton, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1969. “Eighty-five percent of all existing FDA-approved drugs have one or more nitrogen atoms," Dr. Sharma said, as quoted by the science portal phys.org. He added, "By selectively adding one nitrogen atom to these existing drug heterocycles in the later stages of development, we can change the molecule’s biological and pharmacological properties without changing its functionalities."

Possible impact on drug costs and accessibility

One of the exciting things about Dr. Sharma's research is that it could make drugs cheaper. Normally, making drugs is expensive because it takes many steps. But with this new method, they can add nitrogen atoms to drugs at the later stages of production, which makes the process cheaper and helps reduce the cost of the drug.Bottom of Form “By adding a nitrogen atom in the late stages of development, you can make new drugs cheaper. It’s like renovating a building rather than building it new from scratch," Dr. Sharma explained.

This new method could help make important drugs more available to people who need them, especially those in poor areas. Dr. Sharma pointed out that even in the United States, healthcare costs are very high. "Per capita health expenditures exceed $12,000 annually," he said. "By making these drugs easier to produce on a large scale, we could reduce the cost of healthcare for vulnerable populations around the world." This new approach could help fight serious diseases like cancer and neurological disorders by making treatments both easier to get and more affordable.