Denali broadens tech to infiltrate the blood-brain barrier with Sirion deal

"Keenly-watched neuro drug developer Denali $DNLI is beefing up its arsenal to smuggle drugs across the brain-blood barrier. The San Francisco-based company joined forces with Sirion Biotech to develop adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors to enable therapeutics to cross the blood-brain barrier and target diseases of the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease."

Very interesting. I wonder what Bioasis has up its sleeve to do something similar. xB3-modified AAVs? Lots of molecular/cloning tricks one can do with AAVs to achieve cell type specific expression and temporal/inducible control of expression. AAVs can be made to express enzymes (i.e. those releated to LSDs) and shRNAs for gene silencing. Once in the cell, these AAVs allow for long term expression in the cell and thus reduces the need for repeat therapeutic treatment. The drawback is that once infected with the AAV, then it is there for a long long time, if not permanantly. 

BDAZ