Experimental Therapy Crosses Blood-Brain Barrier to Treat Neurological Disease

[joseephuss]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0204153712.htm

Experimental Therapy Crosses Blood-Brain Barrier to Treat Neurological Disease

Feb. 4, 2013 — Researchers have overcome a major challenge to treating brain diseases by engineering an experimental molecular therapy that crosses the blood-brain barrier to reverse neurological lysosomal storage disease in mice.

Posted online in PNAS Early Edition on Feb. 4, the study was led by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

"This study provides a non-invasive procedure that targets the blood-brain barrier and delivers large-molecule therapeutic agents to treat neurological lysosomal storage disorders," said Dao Pan, PhD, principal investigator on the study and researcher in the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute at Cincinnati Children's. "Our findings will allow the development of drugs that can be tested for other brain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's."

The scientists assembled the large molecular agents by merging part of a fatty protein called apolipoprotein E (apoE) with a therapeutic lysosomal enzyme called a-L-idurondase (IDUA). Naming the agents IDUAe1 and IDUAe2, researchers used them initially to treat laboratory cultured human cells of the disease mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I). They also tested the agents on mouse models of MPS I.

MPS I is one of the most common lysosomal storage diseases to affect the central nervous system, which in severe form can become Hurler syndrome. In humans, patients can suffer from hydrocephalus, learning delays and other cognitive deficits. If not treated, many patients die by age 10.

[dexternjack]

Reading that brought back some stressful memories from Biochem classes.

Interesting though and another step forward to treating illnesses of the brain.