A fresh approach is looking for particular molecules that can target desired tissues through the bloodstream and make a way into tissues by passing through cells. This novelty will possibly help find answers to matters related to drug treatments for, for instance, cancer and brain diseases, principally as regards drug effectiveness.
A fresh approach designed by a group of scientists at Tampere University is looking for particular molecules that can target desired tissues through the bloodstream and make a way into tissues by passing through cells. This novelty will possibly help find answers to matters related to drug treatments for, for instance, cancer and brain diseases, principally as regards drug effectiveness.
The research project headed by Professor Tero Järvinen at Tampere University has come up with a novel drug screening technique. The technique makesit possible for the screening of billions of molecules as well as assist to resolve issues related to drug delivery in the body. The research was published in the journal Life Science Alliance on 11 February 2025.
The screening approach is founded on the idea of combining phage display and microdialysis performed in a living organism with contemporary high throughput sequencing technologies.
Phage display is a proper ‘golden goose’ of drug design. It is a laboratory based approach whose creation made its inventor a Nobel Prize winner and has been implemented in the discovery of majority of the top 100 best-selling medicines in the world. In phage display, billions of protein fragments, or peptides, can be examined following their desired characteristics. A property such as that will possibly be, for instance, their capacity to attach to a particular receptor or form of cell. Conversely, icrodialysis is a technique that can bring together and analyse small molecules from tissue fluid, for example, straight from unhealthy tissue. The originality in the fresh screening technique is that the microdialysis catheter can be applied to trap bacteriophages expressing the screened peptides. The researchers make it obvious that the extra selection step brought on by the microdialysis probe permits the detection of new homing peptide sequences with the capacity of target tissue homing and tissue penetration.
“For 20 years, my research group and I have been interested in peptides that target specific tissues or tissue injuries via the bloodstream. With the new technique we have developed, we aim to find peptides with an additional functional property, the ability to pass through cells. This would ensure that the drug truly accumulates where the actual disease is active,” Järvinen explains.
There exist entry barricades for proficient drug buildup in the human body. For instance, the blood-brain barricade protects the brain from damaging substances but in addition prevents medicines from successfully getting to the brain tissue. A related difficulty is created by the high pressure of cancer tissue. In view of the fact that the peptides desired in the fresh screening technique conduct themselves like viruses and can penetrate cells, these barricades can be circumvented by binding the drugs to such a peptide.
The recently designed screening technique was capable of discovering a few biologically highly vigorous molecules in the midst of billions of possible drug candidates. These molecules purposely target the preferred tissue and are capable of gathering in the intercellular space of the target tissue by going through cells.
“We believe that the method we have developed will hopefully lead to the discovery of new, tissue-selective drugs and potentially solve major medical problems related to drug delivery to the brain or cancer tissue. Our goal is also to establish a biotechnology company around this invention,” says Järvinen.
Experts say that the stage that follows now is to examine the research technique more expansively with associates.
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