Quest To Open Medical Door To The Brain
By Richard Maino, London Press Service
Medicine/Biotechnology - one colour picture
IN A vital medical breakthrough, researchers are confident that they can develop a way of allowing drugs to be delivered straight to the human brain - not an easy matter because the brain is specifically programmed to prevent entry by any such “invaders”.
The team will spend the next three years trying to unlock the blood-brain barrier to allow drugs to be targeted at many various neurodegenerative disorders, as well as other diseases, including cancer.
The scientists at the University of Portsmouth, southern England, have been granted funding of nearly half a million pounds by the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom to carry out the research.
There are already drugs that can be used successfully against some diseases elsewhere in the body but when those diseases are in the brain they are much harder to treat because most drugs cannot penetrate the protective barrier.
Chemist Dr Eugen Barbu will lead a team of four scientists from the School of Pharmacy at Portsmouth University. They seek to modify a natural polymer to allow it to create a temporary opening in the blood-brain barrier and get through to deliver medicine.
They will use polymer-based nanoparticles that are approximately one thousandth of the diameter of a single human hair - about 80,000 nanometres wide.
The modified polymer would be small enough to breach the blood-brain barrier and would act as a delivery container carrying the drug. After this carrier delivers the drug load to the brain, it would break down by biodegrading.
A new, living 3D cell-culture model of the human blood-brain barrier will be used to screen the interaction initially between the nanoparticles and the brain.
The research team chose to study natural polymers because they make excellent drug-carriers; they are non-toxic, biodegradable and biocompatible, therefore the brain will not reject them.
Professor Darek Gorecki will be working alongside Dr Barbu. He said: “The Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council thought it was worth investing half a million pounds because, although other scientists are studying ways of penetrating the blood brain barrier, this idea of using modified natural polymers is novel.
“It is very experimental at this stage and the distance from here to doctors being able to better treat brain tumours is a long way off. The brain relies upon a rich blood supply but the barrier exists because it is vital not everything in the blood can get through,” he added.
“It is a very sophisticated filter. We are hoping that by using modified polymers working in various ways we can generate a temporary opening in the cells of the blood-brain barrier and allow drugs to be delivered straight to the brain,” said Professor Gorecki.
If successful, the temporary unlocking of the filter would allow a range of brain diseases to be treated more efficiently. It is hoped that in the long term these formulations will be useful for the treatment of a range of brain diseases including brain tumours, stroke and neurodegenerative disorders.
The research group comprises a multidisciplinary team of senior research fellow Dr Barbu; Dr John Tsibouklis, reader in polymer science; Professor Geoffrey Pilkington, a professor in pharmacy of cellular and molecular neuro-oncology, and a world-renowned expert in brain tumour biology and pathology therapy; and Darek Gorecki, professor of molecular medicine.
The team works in the university’s Institute of Biomedical & Biomolecular Science that researches into biomaterials and bionanotechnology and cellular and molecular medicine and will be supported by two post-doctoral researchers.
The BBSRC is one of seven research councils that work together as Research Councils UK (RCUK). It is funded from the government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. The BBSRC’s current budget is 400m pounds. It supports a total of about 1,600 scientists and 2,000 research students in universities and institutes in the UK.
寻求开启大脑的医学之门
伦敦新闻局Richard Maino撰稿
医学/生物科技 — 一张彩色图片
在一项重要的医学突破中，研究人员确信他们可以开发出一种把药物直接放进人体大脑的方法，这不是一件简单的事情，因为人脑是经过特别“编程”的，是不允许出现“入侵者”的。
研究小组将在未来3年尝试开启血脑屏障，让药物可以在大脑中定位，来治疗众多不同的神经退化失调，以及包括癌症在内的其他疾病。
英格兰南部的朴茨茅斯大学的科学家们，已经从英国生物技术和生物科学研究理事会处获得了近50万英镑的资金，来开展这项研究。
早已经有一些药物可以成功治疗发生在身体其他部位的疾病，但是，一旦这些病发生在大脑，就很难医治，因为绝大多数药物都不能穿透大脑中的保护屏障。
药剂师Eugen Barbu博士将领导一个由来自朴茨茅斯大学药学院的四名科学家组成的小组，他们正在尝试利用一种改良的天然聚合物来暂时开启血脑屏障，并穿过血脑屏障把药物输送进去。
他们将使用基于聚合体的纳米微粒，这些微粒的大小大约相当于人类发丝直径的千分之一——约80,000纳米宽。
改良后的聚合体要足够小才可以穿过血脑屏障，起药物“输送容器” 的作用。在经过运送后，药物到达大脑，然后通过生物递降分解使之分解。
一个人类血脑屏障细胞培养3D新模型将被用来拍摄纳米微粒和大脑之间最初的互动。
研究小组选择研究天然聚合体，因为它们是最好的药物“输送容器”，而且它们是无毒的、可以进行生物分解的、不会引起排斥反应的，因此大脑不会对它们产生抵制。
Darek Gorecki教授将和Barbu博士一起工作，他说：“英国生物技术和生物科学研究理事会认为在这个研究上投资50万英镑是值得的，尽管有其他的科学家在研究穿透血脑屏障的方法，但是使用改良的天然聚合体的想法却是独特新颖。”
他又补充说：“目前还仅仅处于实验阶段，在实验与治疗脑肿瘤患者的临床应用之间还存在着很长一段距离。大脑要依赖于丰富的血液供应，但是也需要血脑屏障的存在，因为它对阻止血液中的其他物质进入大脑至关重要。”
Gorecki教授还说：“它是一个非常精密的过滤器。我们希望通过使用各种方法来发挥改良聚合体的作用，能够做到使血脑屏障细胞暂时开启，让药物直接送达大脑。”
如果能够成功，“过滤器”可以暂时开启，那么一系列的脑部疾病就可以得到更有效地治疗。从长远观点来看，希望这些配方可以帮助治疗一系列的脑部疾病，包括脑肿瘤、脑卒中和神经退化失调。
研究小组由跨学科的高级研究人员组成，包括了Barbu博士、聚合体科学高级讲师John Tsibouklis博士、药剂学和分子神经肿瘤学教授、世界知名脑肿瘤生物学和病理学治疗专家Geoffrey Pilkington教授、分子医学教授Darek Gorecki。
研究小组在朴茨茅斯大学生物医学和生物分子科学研究所开展工作，在生物材料、生物纳米科技、细胞和分子医学领域开展研究，还将获得两名博士后研究员的支持。
英国生物技术和生物科学研究理事会与其他六个研究理事会共同组成了英国研究理事会（RCUK）。它的资金来源于英国创新、大学与技能部。英国生物技术和生物科学研究理事会目前的预算是4亿英镑。它总共支持英国各大学和机构的1,600名科学家和2,000名研究生。
