Researchers are developing 11 research projects to improve how therapeutics reach the brain and central nervous system, backed by more than EUR 1 million in funding from the EQT Foundation. The initiative targets a central bottleneck in central nervous system medicine, where a selective biological interface blocks many potentially viable treatments for neurological, oncological, and rare genetic diseases.
EQT Foundation Commits Over EUR 1 Million to CNS Delivery Research
The blood-brain barrier protects the brain from harmful substances circulating in the bloodstream, but it also prevents large-molecule therapeutics, gene therapies, and antibodies from reaching their targets. To tackle this obstacle, the EQT Foundation has directed financing toward 10 research institutions across the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, and Canada. The supported projects pursue multiple routes through and around the barrier, utilizing engineered biological carriers, molecular shuttles, gene therapy vectors, nanoparticles, and AI-designed delivery technologies.
“I believe that science can now design increasingly sophisticated medicines,” said Cilia Holmes Indahl, Head of EQT Foundation. “For the brain, the question is whether they can get to where they need to go, which makes delivery the problem underneath all the others. This group is trying a remarkably wide set of answers, from borrowing pathways the body already has to building entirely new ones.”
International Research Projects Target Diverse Delivery Mechanisms
The funded teams are approaching central nervous system delivery from varied scientific angles:
- Amsterdam UMC (Netherlands): Elga de Vries is developing extracellular vesicles—naturally occurring cellular transport particles—to carry therapeutic cargo across the blood-brain barrier. Niek van Til is investigating an approach to enable therapeutic intracellular proteins to cross the barrier via transcytosis for neurometabolic diseases.
- Harvard University and Wyss Institute (United States): Sophia Shi is developing “GlycoShuttles” to use surface glycans on brain blood vessels as an entry mechanism for therapeutics. Ana Raquel Pato Santa Maria is engineering dual-target brain shuttles to improve the transport and retention of antibody and oligonucleotide treatments.
- KU Leuven (Belgium): Maarten Dewilde and Els Henckaerts are creating a modular VHH-based adaptor to redirect adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapies toward alternative transport receptors at the blood-brain barrier.
- University of California San Diego (United States): Praveen Raju is designing a targeted nanomedicine approach to transport drugs specifically into pediatric brain tumors where disease has altered the barrier.
- University Medical Center Utrecht (Netherlands): Jeroen Pasterkamp is investigating engineered extracellular vesicles to deliver gene-editing tools to motor neurons for a genetic form of juvenile ALS.
- Seattle Children’s Hospital and University of Washington (United States): Saman Fatima is utilizing artificial intelligence to design compact macrocyclic peptides that act as reusable shuttles for different therapeutic payloads.
- National Research Council Canada (Canada): Umar Iqbal is developing lipid nanoparticles for messenger RNA delivery, combining blood-brain barrier targeting with receptor-mediated transport.
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