How the Brainshuttleᵀᴹ technology opens up new options for delivering medicine to the brain

[Mij]

Clever Delivery

Being able to deliver different kinds of therapies directly to the brain also has the potential to make receiving therapy much simpler for patients. Right now, certain central nervous system therapies must be delivered through injection into the cerebrospinal fluid (intrathecally). By contrast, the BrainshuttleTM can be delivered intravenously into the bloodstream, like many other large molecule therapies. “Changing intrathecal injection to peripheral administration [e.g. intravenous or subcutaneous injection] would mean reducing the treatment burden for patients and could revolutionise their care journey,” said Roberto.

“For central nervous system (CNS) disorders, the BrainshuttleTM technology could be a gamechanger. This is the therapy of the future, and Roche is at the forefront,” Felix summarised. “But even more importantly, the BrainshuttleTM technology has the potential to transform and shape how brain research and research on CNS diseases is done by the entire scientific community going forward.”

 

[Kitty]

When people repeatedly and unnecessarily append ™ to the product name, the warning tone on my sceptic-meter goes so far off the scale it's only audible to bats.

 

[Yann04]

My quack o’ meter was already decently high given it was celled the “BrainShuttle”

 

[hotblack]

The name may be off putting but such is marketing. The technology looks like it could be interesting and has apparently shown promising results

An article on a phase 3 trial for an Alzheimer’s drug

Roche preps phase 3 for 'Brainshuttle' Alzheimer's drug

Buoyed by data from a phase 1b/2a trial, Roche has said it plans to start a phase 3 programme for an Alzheimer's drug from its Brainshuttle programme

pharmaphorum.com

And relevant papers

053 Brainshuttle AD: Investigating safety, tolerability, and PK/PD of RG6102 in prodromal/mild-to-moderate AD | Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry

Delivery of the Brainshuttle™ amyloid-beta antibody fusion trontinemab to non-human primate brain and projected efficacious dose regimens in humans - PMC

There are few treatments that slow neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and while therapeutic antibodies are being investigated in clinical trials for AD treatment, their access to the central nervous system is restricted by the ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Potent and Selective BACE-1 Peptide Inhibitors Lower Brain Aβ Levels Mediated by Brain Shuttle Transport - PMC

Therapeutic approaches to fight Alzheimer's disease include anti-Amyloidβ (Aβ) antibodies and secretase inhibitors. However, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) limits the brain exposure of biologics and the chemical space for small molecules to be BBB ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Gaucher's disease (with some links to PD)

Targeting neuronal lysosomal dysfunction caused by β-glucocerebrosidase deficiency with an enzyme-based brain shuttle construct - Nature Communications

Mutations in glucocerebrosidase (GCase) cause the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher’s disease and are the most common risk factor for Parkinson’s disease. Using a fusion protein comprising GCase and a transferrin receptor antibody fragment, the authors show that the transferrin receptor pathway...

www.nature.com

 

[Kitty]

The name may be off putting but such is marketing. The technology looks like it could be interesting and has apparently shown promising results

I know, but if it works well it doesn't need marketing like that. People would take a real advance seriously even if it was called the Unwin r-CCW vii.