A mind-bending parasite may one day deliver drugs to the brain.
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled parasite that famously makes mice lose their fear of cats, but also can cause deadly foodborne illnesses (SN: 1/14/20). Now, researchers have engineered the parasite to deliver large therapeutic proteins to the brains of mice and into human brain cells grown in lab dishes, an international team of scientists reports July 29 in Nature Microbiology.
Such proteins and the genes that produce them are often too big for viruses — the most common courier for gene therapy — to carry (SN: 10/20/23). If the parasite can be made safe for human use, the technique may
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