Teachers Muhammad Nazim Bahjat and Zainab Nizar Jawad from the College of Education for Pure Sciences at the University of Karbala obtained a patent from the Central Organization for Standardization and Quality Control to enable them to manufacture a new drug compound and use it to treat and inhibit the rapid spread of lung cancer cells.

The patent included measuring the rate of release of the innovative treatment at different acid levels of buffer solutions in a laboratory setting.

The treatment proved successful in releasing the drug from the new prepared nanocomposite in the stomach at a very small percentage and in the intestine at a very large percentage.

The patent was able to study the nature of the interactions between the drug loaded on chitosan and the protein that causes the growth and spread of the lung cancer line (A549). It also identified the amino acids that make up the protein that attract with the drug.

The patent concluded that the nano-drug composite (mefenamic acid drug loaded on nano-chitosan) is a suitable and promising strategy for developing an effective drug delivery system for clinical application against lung cancers.