Researchers find a way to deliver anti-HIV drugs directly to the brain

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/07/researchers-find-a-way-to-deliver-anti-hiv-drugs-directly-to-the-brain/




A team of researchers at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim School of Medicine has found a way to deliver anti-AIDS medicine directly to the brain using nanoparticles. According to the Miami Herald, two scientists, a physicist and a professor of immunology and engineering have found “a new pathway” for medicines to the brain, allowing treatment of HIV and possibly paving the way for new treatments for other neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and brain cancers.

The blood-brain barrier is one of the last great hurdles in internal medicine, a filter in the bloodstream that keeps drugs or contaminants in the blood from directly flowing into the brain. Madhavan Nair of FIU’s department of immunology said of the new breakthrough, “Anything where you have trouble getting drugs to the brain and releasing it, this opens so many opportunities.”

In an “in vitro laboratory test with HIV-positive cells,” Nair and colleague Sakhrat Khizroev attached the anti-retroviral drug AZTTP to magneto-electric nanoparticles. They then used magnetic energy to guide the particles across a lab-made cell membrane designed to mimic the blood-brain barrier.

Khizroev, who designed, directed and oversaw the experiment, told the Herald, “We learned to control electrical forces in the brain using magnetics. We pretty much opened a pathway to the brain.’’