[ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

[spike]

[snip]
>>... However the medics know how to increase the crossing rate without 
> wrecking the medication, and are working the problem as fast as they 
> can...

>...Is there any data about intracranial bexarotene administration in mice?
You might be able to deliver it by lumbar puncture directly into the spine
or epidural space. That would get the drug directly into the cerebrospinal
fluid and the blood brain barrier would be less of an issue. It does carry
more risk but how desperate is the situation?  Stuart LaForge

Eeesh, I don't know Avant.  I am waaaay outside my area of expertise here.
I was still thinking about the notion of dissolving the bex in some material
which might increase its barrier crossing rate, such as alcohol, but again I
am way outside my area of expertise.  My intuition tells me that if this
stuff were dissolved in alcohol, it would ionize the COOH group off of there
perhaps, or if not that, then ionize the hydrogen with the COOH in place.
But I don't know if it works that way.

Good luck to us, we will probably know a lot more about this a few months
from now.  If we scale metabolism linearly, a day to a mouse is about a
month to a human.  But I don't know if it works that way either, nor do I
know if the barrier scales.  The mouse has a lot less volume to surface area
in its brain than a human, but the blood is pretty similar: mouse blood
cells are not that different in size from ours.

I don't know if bexarotene is THE ONE, but I suspect one of her sisters will
be.  Good luck!

spike