The Science of BBB
The following may have been written up before the BTI technology had been released via NRs. They don't seem to be aware of the particular protein p97 that BTI has isolated...but Transferrin is mantioned. These two articles from Discover Magazine relate to the potential to get drugs past the BBB. I wonder if the writer knows anything about bioAsis?...and the very latest scientific studies they have done and are doing with Shire? ( these may have been posted earlier?)
Discover Magazine, November, 2011 issue
The Brain Maybe You Do Need a Hole in Your Head—to Let the Medicine In
To heal the brain, scientists are trying to poke through the shield that isolates it from the rest of the body.
by Carl Zimmer
Excerpts
Neuroscientists these days regularly make spectacular discoveries about how the brain gets sick. They know much more today about brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and a host of other neurological disorders than they did just a few years ago. And from such discoveries come all sorts of encouraging possibilities for treating or even curing these diseases. If ?only we could break down some rogue protein or bind a drug to ?a troublesome receptor, it seems as if all would be well. There’s just one little hitch: Even if scientists invented the perfect cure, they ?probably couldn’t get it into the brain to do its work…
These days, researchers unraveling the workings of the brain’s filter are trying to find similar kinds of passageways so they can get drugs past it too. Pardridge and his colleagues wondered if they could slip therapeutic compounds into the brain with the help of insulin and transferrin, a molecule that moves iron from place to place; both insulin and transferrin are granted free passage across the blood-brain barrier. To turn ordinary insulin and transferrin into Trojan Horses that can sneak other molecules inside, they engineered antibodies that could grab onto them. Next they welded drugs onto the antibodies.
SEE:
https://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-the-brain-maybe-do-need-hole-head-let-medicine-in
Discover Magazine May, 2011
Excerpts:
What’s the News: A modified antibody can make its way into the brain and target the development of Alzheimer’s-inducing plaques, researchers reported today in two animal studies in Science Translational Medicine. The blood-brain barrier usually keeps drugs and other compounds from entering the brain in large enough quantities to be effective, but these studies show a way to trick the body’s own defenses into letting the drug in, demonstrating that this obstacle to treating Alzheimer’s could potentially be overcome.
How the Heck:
- Antibodies—immune proteins that attack disease-causers like viruses and bacteria—are far too big to fit through the blood-brain barrier under normal circumstances. But because of the brain’s need for iron, one protein is routinely ferried across the barrier: transferrin, which binds to iron in the blood.
- So, the researchers added a molecular structure to the antibody that essentially fooled receptors in the blood-brain barrier into treating the antibody as though it were transferrin, picking it up from the bloodstream and releasing it on the other side, into the brain. Ten times as much of the modified antibody made it past the barrier, compared to a version of the antibody without the add-on.
- The researchers tailored the antibody to bind to BACE1, an enzyme that contributes to the formation of Alzheimer’s-triggering plaques. The antibody successfully bound to BACE1, interfering with the formation of the plaques.
- The antibody reduced amyloid-beta levels in the brain by about 20% in some animal types and about 50% in others, the researchers found.
https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/05/26/new-way-to-smuggle-drugs-into-the-brain-may-lead-to-better-alzheimers-treatments/