Sneaking drugs into the brain could treat conditions like Alzheimer’s

Drug delivery methods that use one of the body’s systems to sneak mRNA molecules across the blood-brain barrier could help treat conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cancer.

To Michael Le Paige

A way to sneak messenger RNA molecules into the brain could be useful in treating neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumors.

Diseases that affect the brain can be difficult to treat because the blood-brain barrier, which prevents pathogens in the bloodstream from reaching the brain, also blocks the passage of large, potentially therapeutic molecules such as mRNA. .

Now Wenchao Gu and her colleagues at Cornell University in New York have developed a method based on the recently discovered native virus-like particles…