On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kylie Smith. Our brains are protected by a tight-knit biological wall called the blood-brain barrier. This barrier prevents potentially dangerous substances in our blood from accessing sensitive brain tissue but also restricts access to therapeutics or imaging agents intended for brain delivery. Kylie’s research focuses on how to deliver material to the brain via a direct transport pathway in the nose, bypassing the blood-brain barrier completely. Her research combines nose-to-brain delivery with medical imaging to optimize the delivery technique by noninvasively tracking drugs as they transit to the brain. By quantifying the amount of drug that reached the target site using imaging tools like positron emission tomography, we can test different versions of the drug, loading solutions, or delivery approaches. This work could reduce barriers to treatment for patients that cannot take ingestible or injectable therapeutics and lead to expanded treatment options for brain diseases without a cure.
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