研究実績の概要 |
We have developed a new brain targeting strategy which exploits the high impermeability of the blood-brain barrier to selectively label the brain vasculature. This strategy will help to overcome the unwanted accumulation increase in peripheral organs seen with 'traditional' targeting strategies, thereby preventing detrimental side-effects. This work has been published in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (United States) (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Aug 11;117(32):19141-19150. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2002016117).
We have also carried out preliminary work to further enhance this strategy to allow continual therapeutic dosing, which will be important to treat chronic neurodegenerative diseases. The enhanced strategy consists of delivering mRNA (in functionalized nano micelles) encoding labelled proteins (biotinylated proteins) specifically into brain endothelial cells (BEC), thereby inducing BEC to continually present labelled proteins on their cell surface to allow drug-loaded nanoparticles to be continually targeted into the brain.
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