Israeli and US scientists slip antibodies into cells to fight Parkinson's and inflammation

Antibodies are among the most successful medicines of the past three decades, but they have a basic limitation: they are too large and too charged to cross a cell's outer membrane, so they can only act on targets outside cells. Tel Aviv University, which publicised the work on 10 September 2026, notes that most disease-related proteins sit inside cells, out of reach of today's antibody drugs. A collaboration between Cornell University, the Technion and Tel Aviv University has now shown a way around the barrier, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The method, developed in the labs of Chris Alabi and Matthew DeLisa at Cornell, temporarily coats an antibody with a synthetic molecule called SL4. The coating adds negative charge, which lets the antibody stick to the positively charged lipid nanoparticles already used to deliver mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines. Once the particle has carried its cargo inside a cell, the chemical environment there cuts the coating away and the antibody returns to its original working shape.

The team tested the approach in several disease settings. In a model of Parkinson's disease, Prof. Avi Schroeder's group at the Technion delivered an antibody against alpha-synuclein, the protein that clumps in the brains of patients, and saw the toxic aggregates in nerve cells fall significantly. In a mouse model of acute lung injury, an antibody that blocks an inflammatory switch reduced inflammation and improved lung tissue. Other tests showed the antibodies could dampen signalling pathways that drive some cancers. Tel Aviv University's Prof. Ben Maoz and Prof. Uri Ashery, of the Sagol School of Neuroscience, contributed to the neuroscience work.

The research is still preclinical and has not been tested in people. Its significance is that it works with standard, clinically approved antibodies and an existing delivery technology, rather than requiring each drug to be redesigned from scratch.