For patients battling neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other dementias, delivering disease-fighting antibody drugs directly to the brain has proven to be a difficult task. Our bodies set up tight walls to prevent infections from spreading to the brain, where they often become fatal.

Unfortunately, this protective feature also prevents us from getting drugs into the brain. Approximately 1 in 10,000 antibodies injected into patients actually makes it to the brain, with these cellular fighters trapped in the blood rather than escaping through cracks in the blood vessels into the brain.

Now, researchers have mapped out a new transit process to enable drugs to reach the brain using extracellular vesicles—tiny bubbles naturally produced by cells in our bodies.