Recent studies indicate that the hyperactivation of the PD-1/PD-L1 axis in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain has an influence on disease pathophysiology. With this in mind, researchers from Sungkyunkwan University evaluated INR-301, a novel superior blood-brain barrier (BBB)-penetrating anti-PD-L1 antibody, in an AD model.

Whether as primary tumors or metastases, brain tumors remain stubbornly intractable to the progress that has occurred in many other tumor types. As Igor Vivanco, who is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London, noted in his talk at the European Society for Medical Oncology Targeted Anticancer Therapies (ESMO TAT) meeting in Paris this week, the last win in glioblastoma was the addition of temozolomide to the radiotherapy standard of care in 2005. And temozolomide’s benefit is measured in months, not years.

While NASA gets the glory for exploration of the vast unknown of space, Bionaut Labs Ltd. hopes to reap similar fame by transforming travel through the brain with Bionauts, microrobots designed to deliver therapeutic payloads across the blood-brain barrier. To help achieve that mission, the company raised $43.2 million in a series B financing round led by Khosla Ventures.

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a target in many cancers, but EGFR inhibitors have displayed little utility in treating glioblastoma (GBM) due to limited blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a method to efficiently replace microglia, which are brain-specific immune cells, via a modified bone marrow transplant.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a method to efficiently replace microglia, which are brain-specific immune cells, via a modified bone marrow transplant.

An international study led by scientists at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium has shown that Wnt ligand signaling specificity is adjustable and may represent a means of treating CNS disorders by normalizing blood-brain barrier (BBB) function.

A number of possible mechanisms have been explored, but there is still no safe, reliable and universally applicable method for delivering drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to treat central nervous system diseases. Now researchers have succeeded in tuning the effect of methamphetamine, a cause of BBB breakdown, enabling brain penetration of small molecules and therapeutic proteins, without damaging the epithelial cells that constitute the main physical element of the barrier.