Nat commun: a new method is expected to overcome the "blood brain barrier"

October 14, 2019 / BIOON / -- in a recent study published in the journal Nature communications, scientists at Newcastle University in the UK have made a major breakthrough in how drugs penetrate the blood-brain barrier For the first time, they found a simple way to deliver drugs effectively to the brain, thereby improving the treatment of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases Capillaries in the brain block the penetration of most drugs, so it is very difficult to target the brain for drug therapy However, some viruses have found ways to bypass the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain In order to treat some nervous system diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, drugs can use modified viruses to bypass this barrier and transport drugs to the area (image source: www Pixabay Com) the team has now designed a small particle similar to the size of a virus, which acts as a brain carrier and can be filled with drugs for intravenous injection Professor moein Moghimi, who led the study, said: "crossing the blood-brain barrier can effectively solve central nervous system diseases, including brain tumors and Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease Our breakthrough allows for a minimally invasive combination of drugs, peptide and nucleic acid therapeutics to be administered intravenously to the brain " At present, in the treatment of nervous system diseases, it is still very difficult to "package" the virus safely In addition, there are risks in the injection of drugs into cerebrospinal fluid In the study, the authors used a viral peptide that targets the brain and slightly modified it to form "small hairy particles" when water was added Scientists have found that when injected into mice, particles can cross the blood-brain barrier and reach neurons and microglia in the brain Professor Moghimi added: "our drug delivery system is widely used and can be further improved, so in principle, we can hope to solve the shortage of drug delivery to the brain through intravenous injection Although there is still a long way to go, we hope that our technology platform can provide many opportunities for using modern therapies and genetic drugs to solve neurodegenerative diseases " Information source: arriving the blood brand barrier: delivering therapeutics to the brain original source: Lin Ping Wu, davoud ahmedvand, Junan Su, arnaldur hall, Xiaolong Tan, Z Shadi farhangrazi, S moein Moghimi Crossing the blood brand barrier with nanoligand drug carriers self assembled from a phase display device Nature communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12554-2