# Designed Vehicles for Blood Brain Barrier Traversal

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2020 · $485,848

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Emerging peptide-, protein-, and nucleic acid-based therapeutics for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and
other neurologic conditions are blocked from diffusing into the brain by the blood–brain barrier (BBB). The
long-term goal of this project is to deliver large therapeutic cargo such as these into the brain using designed
BBB-crossing drug-delivery vehicles. The ​overall objectives are to (i) leverage recent breakthroughs in
computational peptide design to yield new knowledge about BBB permeability and (ii) to designed from scratch
new proteins that ferry cargo into the brain by exploiting natural systems that the brain uses to receive nutrients
and signals. The ​central hypothesis is that the systematic design of functional biomolecules will yield new
insights and tools for improving the delivery of large biomolecule therapeutics into the brain. The ​specific aims
are: 1) to systematically and rationally discover the physiochemical properties which confer BBB permeability
to designed peptide macrocycles (a promising new class of therapeutics); 2) to computationally design small,
hyperstable proteins which bind to receptors that naturally cycle between the blood- and brain-side of the BBB;
and 3) to fuse the binding proteins generated in Aim 2 to various drug-binding/packaging proteins, thereby
creating protein assemblies that ferry large therapeutics into the brain. This project is ​innovative because it
proposes to resolve a long-standing barrier to the treatment of neurologic diseases (namely, the difficulty of
delivering therapeutics into the brain) by designing from scratch new BBB-crossing drug delivery vehicles. The
project is ​significant because it is expected to provide tools which will improve outcomes in a range of future
clinical trials of therapeutics which require delivery into the brain.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9987451
- **Project number:** 5R01AG063845-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** DAVID BAKER
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $485,848
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-08-15 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9987451

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9987451, Designed Vehicles for Blood Brain Barrier Traversal (5R01AG063845-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9987451. Licensed CC0.

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