Camels and Llamas May Hold an Unexpected Key to Healing the Brain

Scientists looking for new ways to treat brain disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's have found an unlikely advantage in camels, llamas, and alpacas (known as camelids) — animals whose immune systems could point to a new path for brain treatment. These species produce unusually small immune proteins called nanobodies — tiny, stable fragments of antibodies — that can cross the brain’s protective barrier, where most drugs can’t.

A new review in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences suggests these tiny molecules could work like a hybrid — precise like antibodies but nimble like small drugs — offering a safer, more targeted way to treat the brain.

“Camelid nanobodies open a new era of biologic therapies for brain disorders and revolutionize our thinking about therapeutics,” said co-corresponding author Philippe Rondard, in a press release. “We believe they can form a new class of drugs between conventional antibodies and small molecules.”

Read More: Can Animals Get Schizophrenia, or Is It Unique to Humans?

Tiny Nanobodies, Big Promise for Alzheimer’s and Schizophrenia

In the early 1990s, a team of Belgian scientists stumbled onto something strange while studying the immune systems of camelids. Instead of the usual Y-shaped antibodies found in most mammals, these animals were making a slimmer version, missing half of their usual parts.

That tiny fragment, later named a nanobody, turned out to be just one-tenth the size of a normal antibody. And size, in this case, changes everything. Nanobodies are compact enough to reach molecular targets that larger drugs can’t, including those shielded behind the brain’s protective blood-brain barrier. They’re also remarkably stable and easy to engineer, meaning researchers can design them to zero in on specific receptors tied to memory, learning, or mood — areas that conventional drugs often affect too broadly.

“These are highly soluble small proteins that can enter the brain passively,” said co-corresponding author Pierre-André Lafon, in the press release. “By contrast, small-molecule drugs that are designed to cross the blood-brain barrier are hydrophobic in nature, which limits their bioavailability, increases the risk of off-target binding, and is linked to side effects.”

A New Kind of Drug for Safer Brain Treatments

Recent preclinical work has already shown what nanobodies can do. In mouse models of schizophrenia, researchers used a specially designed nanobody that targets the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGlu2) — a brain receptor involved in regulating glutamate, a key neurotransmitter. After injection, the nanobody entered the brain, accumulated in regions tied to cognition and emotion, and restored performance on memory tests.

Rather than flooding the brain with chemicals, this nanobody acted as a “positive allosteric modulator,” subtly enhancing receptor function only when the natural signaling molecules were present. That precision meant longer-lasting benefits — more than a week of cognitive improvement in mice — with no detectable toxicity or inflammation.

Such results hint at a future where nanobody-based drugs could finely tune brain circuits instead of bluntly altering them, reducing the fatigue, weight gain, or sedation often associated with existing psychiatric medications.

The Future of Nanobody Medicine

Still, the road to human treatments is long. Before nanobodies can reach the clinic, researchers must prove that they’re safe, stable, and effective over time.

“Regarding the nanobodies themselves, it is also necessary to evaluate their stability, confirm their proper folding, and ensure the absence of aggregation,” Rondard said. “It will be necessary to obtain clinical-grade nanobodies and stable formulations that maintain activity during long-term storage and transport.”

For now, the team is testing how these molecules behave under chronic use, and the results look promising. If their durability holds up, nanobodies could become the next generation of biologic drugs.

This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.

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Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• This article references information from the recent study published in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences: Nanobodies: a new paradigm for brain disorder therapies