Enhanced brain cells clear away dementia-related proteins

medicalxpress.com

34 pointsWaitWaitWha2 comments

CAR-T works because blood is accessible. You pull the cells, engineer them outside the body, and reinfuse.

Astrocytes are fixed in brain tissue, so "single injection" means intracranial surgery.. the clinical bar for injecting anything into an Alzheimer's patient's brain is high enough that this is still a long way from a treatment.

1st, this is unlike CAR-T as there is no extraction, engineering on that extraction, and then reinjection.

2nd, the only injection is intravenous. It uses a kind of virus that has been specifically engineered to cross the blood-brain barrier. That virus has a payload which infects/alters astrocytes already inside the brain, and the astrocytes become aggressive at clearing amyloid plaques.

3rd, I agree that the road to a marketable therapeutic could be a long way off.

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