Bees' poison component can help improving drugs that treat brain diseases

A research opens the door to the use of poison as a new source to cross the blood-brain barrier.
A research opens the door to the use of poison as a new source to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Research
(16/01/2017)

A molecule, in particular a peptide designed out of beeʼs poison, can become an important contribution to increase the efficiency of drugs treating the central nervous system. The research by Benjamí Oller Salvia consisted on the creation of this “vehicle” or “molecule shuttle” made out of a neurotoxin, and which is able to cross the blood-brain barrier to bring drugs to the brain.

A research opens the door to the use of poison as a new source to cross the blood-brain barrier.
A research opens the door to the use of poison as a new source to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Research
16/01/2017

A molecule, in particular a peptide designed out of beeʼs poison, can become an important contribution to increase the efficiency of drugs treating the central nervous system. The research by Benjamí Oller Salvia consisted on the creation of this “vehicle” or “molecule shuttle” made out of a neurotoxin, and which is able to cross the blood-brain barrier to bring drugs to the brain.

A cell barrier controls the flow of substances from blood to the brain; it is a strict control  to avoid external agents and infections. This protective function, however, is also an unreachable choice for most drugs aimed to treat brain diseases, from cancers to  minority diseases. There is a research line of IRB Barcelona dedicated to shuttle peptides to cross this barrier, to which Doctor Oller Salvia's doctoral thesis belongs. His thesis is supervised by Professor Ernest Giralt from the Faculty of Chemistry of the UB and Doctor Meritzell Teixidó.

 
Benjamí Oller Salvia says his research, awarded with a Ramon Margalef Award by the Board of Trustees, means “the discovery of a new launch, which, unlike previous researches, is resistant to degradation of serum proteases and has the capacity of leading compounds to the brain with a remarkable selectivity”. Also, “it opens the door to the use of poison as a new source to cross the blood-brain barrier, since lots of these have other molecules resistant to proteases and which affect the central nervous system”, he says.
 
During his research, Doctor Oller Salvia designed the peptide MiniAp-4 minimizing apamin, a neurotoxin from beesʼ poison. MiniAp-4 is less toxic and immunogenic than the initial neurotoxin, and has a bigger permeability through the blood-brain barrier. The new peptide has proved to be able to move drugs, including therapeutic proteins, and nanoparticles in vitro, in a model with human cells reproduced by the blood-barrier, and has also been tested in vivo on mice.
 
The findings have been registered according to their potentialities. The researcher, however, says that his findings are still far from being applied to drugs. Oller-Salvia is now in a postdoctoral stay at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB) in Cambridge, willing to continue with his contributions in the world of biomedicine.