Wednesday, January 29, 2025

A New Approach in Medicine

New Gene Delivery Method Paves the Way for Advanced Brain Therapies:


On August 15, 2024 a new article was published speaking out about a new study where genetic material is being transported in the brain and for it to effectively reach cellular targets. The genes will essentially go across the blood-brain barrier and in order to do this it has to latch onto human protein and hopefully it will then distribute the genetic cargo as its called to the many, many cells in the brain. Adeno-Associated viruses are found to be the main delivering system for these therapies. These viruses are key in a sense because they start treating the disorder at their "root genetic cause." This article also goes into great detail about how this method is very effective but the blood-brain barrier can be a tricky place to be in. It's main job is to be a filter in the brain and when the gene therapies are in action, they can get filtered out too making it very difficult for it to do it's job. In one of the newer Adeno-Associated viruses, I do not believe this has been used on humans yet, but they are using mice that express the human form of one of the receptors and it looks very promising that it can be a big success in people. 


I've learned about the blood-brain barrier before in the brain, but after reading this article and finding out it can play a big role in making life saving discoveries it's very cool in my opinion. I don't know too much about these small viruses that can be used in the process, but if they start seeing success in humans then this can be huge in research and how we can treat individuals in the future. 


Sources:

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2024/new-gene-delivery-method-paves-the-way-for-advanced-brain-therapies

https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/new-gene-delivery-vehicle-shows-promise-human-brain-gene-therapy








1 comment:

  1. It's amazing to imagine what effects this type of therapy would have on genetic diseases. It appears that if the issue of the blood-brain barrier is resolved, this new technique could have profound results. I have never considered the role of genetics in the brain, but this research showed me that genetics is relevant in every aspect of life not just predicting the genotypes or phenotypes of offspring.

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