The researchers found that appropriately formulated substances, including drugs, are taken up by axon nerve endings and transported to the core tissues of the nervous system. Since nerves are territorial and map out particular segments of the body, this allows the selective delivery of drugs to relevant parts of the nervous system involved in pain sensation and other disease processes.
The researchers created a complex made up of an axonal transport facilitator (ATF) attached to a linker molecule bearing up to a hundred reversibly attached drug molecules. This complex was configured to deliver the drug gabapentin in a rat model of neuropathic pain to selected dorsal-root ganglia by axonal transport after injection into tissue supplied by the target nerves.
"This very complex design achieves something that, previously, was not thought possible," Filler said. "The way it works makes this the first truly 21st-century medication. These results are expected to lead to dozens of new medications that will solve difficult drug delivery problems in the treatment of conditions as varied as stroke, Alzheimer's disease, shingles and herpes."
"A single injection of the ATF drug complex caused a 50 percent reduction in the hypersensitivity to pain that lasted up to four days," says Filler. "To achieve a similar effect by the current drugs would require more than 300 times the amount of painkiller given in multiple doses."
The current method of pain treatment involves delivering painkillers into the blood stream. The pain medication then travels throughout a patient's system, affecting all areas of the body, unlike this new, targeted approach.
Clinical
'"/>
Contact: Roxanne Yamaguchi Moster
roxannem@support.ucla.edu
310-794-2264
University of California - Los Angeles
7-Nov-2000