My doctoral work (at the Pharmaceutics division, CDRI) has shown that anti-TB drugs delivered as oral doses or inhalable microparticles differentially affect drug bioavailability and innate responses of macrophages to TB infection. Mycobacteria infected macrophages receiving microparticles showed enhanced respiratory burst, nitric oxide production, cytokine secretion and caspase dependent apoptosis. Thus, in addition to building up high intracellular drug concentrations, microparticles induce serendipitous activation of lung macrophages infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and thereby significantly enhance bactericidal activity of the drugs. This suggests that inhalable microparticles containing multiple anti-TB drugs offer promises of dose and dosing frequency reduction, toxicity alleviation and targeting macrophage resident Mycobacteria.

Innate Reponses leading to microbe recognition and host defense strategies, Drug targeting, Macrophage activation and host pathogen cross talks during infection or pathological states.