Researchers have found a seemingly safe thanks to administering drugs directly into the brain: through an antecedently unknown type of neurotransmitters. They tested this approach in mice.
The blood-brain barrier poses a vital challenge for doctors hoping to deliver drugs and different therapeutic substances directly to the brain.
A new study from researchers at Tufts University in Boston, MA, describes some way of obtaining medication safely across the blood-brain barrier.
The researchers found that certain neurotransmitters will facilitate lipid-based nanoparticles pass through the blood-brain barrier and into the brain.
The aforesaid blood-brain barrier consists of a blood vessel covering of endothelial cells that keep unrelated molecules from escaping from the blood vessels and coming into the brain fluid wherever they could have an effect on neurons and different brain cells. The barrier is extremely selective regarding the non-native molecules it permits into the brain, and that includes therapeutic substances.
While tiny molecule or macromolecule medication has the potential to treat brain tumors, infections, neurogenerative disorders, and stroke, the presence of the blood-brain barrier makes it troublesome for doctors to administer such therapies.
Scientists have tried numerous workarounds, and none have tested sufficiently safe or effective. Direct injection of compounds into the brain, as well as efforts to force ‘leaks’ through the barrier, carry risks, similar to neurotoxicity, infection, and tissue injury.
However, price and safety concerns accompany this approach. Scientists have additionally investigated a similar use of polymers, nanocapsules, and nanoparticles with some success. However, adapting these materials for such use is usually difficult.
However, the blood-brain barrier will permit certain neurotransmitters into the brain. Xu and his colleagues have developed a system that uses a specific class of neurotransmitters as a means to traverse the barrier, carrying molecules into the brains of mice.
The authors of the study began by attaching one among these neurotransmitters to fat-, or lipid-like molecules. Next, they doped this combined neurotransmitter-lipidoids, or NT-lipidoids, into lipid-nanoparticles (LNPs).
LNPs are tiny lipid bubbles that the scientists inserted therapeutic molecules. The scientists will inject the NT-lipidoid LNPs and therefore the molecules they contain into the bloodstream intravenously.
When the LNPs arrive at the blood-brain barrier, their neurotransmitter provides entry, delivering the molecules they carry directly and safely to the brain’s neurons and alternative cells.
