Iranian Knowledge-Based Company Saves Country $25 Million with Producing Anticancer Nanomedicine

"This company’s field of activity is production of nano drugs including nanomicelle and nanoliposomal. Liposomal doxorubicin is one of the anticancer drugs that we have been working on since we entered the Iranian market last year" Ahmed Pourahadi, the managing director of a knowledge-based company said, according to a report by the Iranian Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy.

"This drug is prescribed for the treatment of a broad range of cancers, mainly for breast and blood cancer," he said, adding, "A few years ago, an American company introduced a drug to the market that lowered the side effects of doxorubicin, but its price was very high. The drug produced by the specialists in our company comes out in the same quality as the foreign-made equivalent, while its price is one third of the imported counterparts."

Doxorubicin is an antibiotic derived from the Streptomyces peucetius bacterium. It has had wide use as a chemotherapeutic agent since the 1960s. Doxorubicin is part of the anthracycline group of chemotherapeutic agents; other anthracyclines include daunorubicin, idarubicin, and epirubicin.

Pointing to the usage of nanoliposome technology in producing doxorubicin made by the knowledge-based company, Pourahadi said, "Relying on this technology, the medicinal substance only enters the cancer cells and destroys them, therefore its side effects are greatly reduced."

Referring to the share of knowledge-based products in the market of anti-cancer drugs, he said, "About 20,000 to 25,000 vials of the same drug are consumed in Iran. This knowledge-based company has succeeded in meeting the country's needs for the past five years and has laid the ground for storing it to save the country $25 million by preventing imports."

"The medicine is being registered in Iraq and the Philippines, in the meantime, the Iranian anti-cancer medicine is exported to Syria."

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