Researchers have found a new way to make a temporary chink in the brain’s armor, opening the door for treatments to get in. The results of a rodent study, published September 14 in the Journal of Neuroscience, may highlight a method to sneak therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, HIV and cancer past the blood-brain barrier.



“It’s a very interesting development,” says Celia Brosnan of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y. “It has considerable potential, but obviously there’s a lot that needs to be followed up on.”

Many potentially useful compounds exist to treat neurological diseases, notes study coauthor Margaret Bynoe of Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, N.Y. “The problem is getting them into the brain,” she says, where walls of specialized cells line blood vessels and keep harmful substances out. Since this barrier also impedes drugs, researc