Brain Barrier Breached in Roche Push to Deliver Alzheimer’s Drug

Roche Holding AG scientists may have found a way to overcome a blood barrier that keeps drugs from directly entering the brain, potentially opening new pathways to attack Alzheimer’s disease.

The technique, tested in animals, makes use of a receptor that carries iron molecules across the barrier of blood, fluid and membranes that keeps bacteria and other substances, such as medicines, out of the brain, said Ryan Watts, a researcher at Roche’s Genentech unit in South San Francisco, California. The scientists configured a protein called an antibody to hitch a ride on the receptor, he said.