New nanoparticles deliver therapy throughout the brain and edit Alzheimer's gene in miceGene therapies have the potential to treat neurological disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, but they face a common barrier—the blood-brain barrier."There is no cure yet for many devastating brain disorders," says Shaoqin "Sarah" Gong, UW-Madison professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and biomedical engineering and researcher at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.Unfortunately, the barrier bars some beneficial treatments, like certain vaccines and gene therapy packages, from reaching their targets because in lumps them in with hostile invaders.In a study recently published in the journal Advanced Materials, Gong and her lab members, including postdoctoral researcher and first author of the study Yuyuan Wang, describe a new family of nanoscale capsules made of silica that can carry genome-editing tools into many organs around the body and then harmlessly dissolve.Because the nanocapsules can be administered repeatedly and intravenously, they can achieve higher therapeutic efficacy without risking more localized and invasive methods."