Now we can watch single proteins move inside living brain cells

Drug hunters for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's face a frustrating gap: they can see a drug work or fail in patients, but not watch what it does to the proteins inside a living brain cell in real time. After more than two decades of work, Professor Frederic Meunier's team at the University of Queensland's Brain Institute, with Dr Tristan Wallis, has built exactly that window. Their platform, called NASTIC, tracks how single proteins move, cluster and interact inside living neurons — and how a drug candidate changes that behaviour. The underlying science is published in Nature Protocols, and the technology has now spun out into a Brisbane company, Accretion Bio, backed by Antler and UniQuest, so labs around the world can use it.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation