Scientists Gene Hack Parasite to Deliver Drugs to Brain

Our brain has an internal traffic cop, the blood-brain barrier, which only allows certain molecules in and out of your noggin while keeping harmful substances, like germs, out.

But this same barrier presents a challenge for doctors who want to administer medication.

To get around this obstacle, a group of scientists gene-hacked Toxoplasma gondii, the same brain parasite that can be spread in cat litter, into becoming a carrier for therapeutic proteins, as detailed in a new study in the journal Nature Microbiology. And because of their success, this kind of method could potentially treat debilitating neurological disorders such as Rett syndrome in the future.

It's an ingenious solution because Toxoplasma, if ingested accidentally while handling cat poop, can easily be passed from the human stomach to the bloodstream and then the nervous system — features that made it attractive to scientists who want to pass medication through the blood-brain barrier.

For this study, the researchers, led by Tel Aviv University in Israel, took Toxoplasma and bioengineered parts of it so the parasite is able to carry big packages of helpful proteins.

They demonstrated that the engineered parasites were able to carry protein molecules by monitoring the behavior of the hacked Toxoplasma in cultured brain cells and lab mice.

They were also able to use the Toxoplasma to deliver the MeCP2 protein through the blood-brain barrier.

In Rett syndrome, characterized by severely impaired movements in its final stage, patients usually have a mutated version of the MeCP2 protein, so one potential treatment is that they could be injected with a normal version of it to reverse symptoms.

This treatment with bioengineered Toxoplasma is still a long way off from actually treating any actual patients, though, so here's hoping that it'll come to fruition.

More on brains: Scientists Use Nanoparticles to Remote Control Brains of Mice

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