Targeting Drugs to the Brain - Project
Project
This project will greatly increase our current understanding of the challenges in drug delivery to the brain and their impact on the treatment of neurological disorders. If successful, this opens a completely new field of options to treat neurological and neurodegenerative disorders. Such a high-risk but high-gain technology platform can enable large-scale alleviation of brain disease burden on both the individual patient level and healthcare systems.
Treating neurological disorders is difficult
The brain is protected from potential external threats (viruses, bacteria…) by three different barriers, which only allow crucial nutrients to pass. Up to 98% of drugs cannot pass from the bloodstream into the brain. As a result, many promising drugs are useless for treating neurological conditions.
Crossing the barrier
In this project, a method to target drugs to the brain will be developed by attaching a drug to a Nanobody® capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier.
Proof of concept
Once developed, the drug-Nanobody® conjugate will be validated in a proof-of-concept study in mice. This will validate whether it is possible to shuttle drugs into the brain, for example to treat brain metastases.