[New formats for improving brain drug delivery of antibodies: the blood-brain barrier case].

Many neurodegenerative or tumor brain pathologies should be able to benefit from the impressive medicinal advances that represent therapeutic antibodies. Unfortunately, many failures have been observed with antibodies whose targets are in the brain parenchyma due to their very low brain distribution. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) that exhibits extremely selective and restrictive properties is responsible for the low brain penetration of high-molecular mass molecules including therapeutic antibodies. The objective of this article is to present the properties of the BBB and the latest advances in the engineering of new antibody formats to possibly improve their brain distribution.