Can you make mice smarter?
Professor Greg Neely did. But turning fascinating science into a medicine means answering much harder questions about safety, dosing, translation to humans and where to start clinically.
In this episode, we explore Greg’s work using mRNA and lipid nanoparticles to deliver proteins through the nose and into the brain, and what happened when biotech and drug development experts stress-tested his development plan for the first time.
Their questions changed his roadmap.
Greg’s team at the University of Sydney started by delivering oxytocin before moving to BDNF, a protein involved in brain function that normally cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. The early results showed they could get BDNF into the brain and improve cognition in animals.
Then came the commercialisation questions.
Will intranasal delivery translate from mice to humans?
How do you control the dose? How do you demonstrate target engagement?
What are the safety risks?
And even if the technology works, is Alzheimer’s really the right disease to tackle first?
For a scientist moving towards entrepreneurship, these are very different questions from those asked in an academic lab.
After the Drug Discovery Forum, Greg began looking more seriously at Rett syndrome as a possible first clinical indication, considered new validation experiments, refined his pitch and took that stronger story to BIO in San Diego.
It’s a real-life example of how bringing biotech expertise into an academic project early can expose blind spots while there’s still time to change the plan.
In this episode:
This episode is Part 4 of a six-part series exploring the path from academic research to biotech and drug development, based on conversations from the 2026 Drug Discovery Forum in Sydney.
Across the series, scientists, biotech entrepreneurs, industry experts and technology transfer professionals explore what it takes to move promising research beyond the lab and towards patients.
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