INEB RECENT PUBLICATIONS: siRNA as a tool to improve the treatment of brain diseases: Mechanism, targets and delivery

INEB researchers recently published an article in the Ageing Research Reviews, Available online 19 March 2015. The article is entitled "siRNA as a tool to improve the treatment of brain diseases: Mechanism, targets and delivery" and is authored by Maria João Gomes, Susana Martins, Bruno Sarmento.

As the population ages, brain pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases and brain cancer increase their incidence, being the need to find successful treatments of upmost importance. Drug delivery to the central nervous system is required in order to reach diseases causes and treat them. However, blood-brain barrier is a key obstacle that prevents the effectiveness of possible treatments due to its ability to strongly limit the perfusion of compounds into the brain. Over the past decades, new approaches towards overcoming BBB and its efflux transporters had been proposed. One of these approaches here reviewed is through small interfering RNA (siRNA), which is capable to specifically target one gene and silence it in a post-transcriptional way. This review focuses on recent strategies to reach brain based on siRNA, and how to specifically target these approaches in order to treat brain diseases.