A new paper, co-authored with Laura A. Uribe, Sandra Leonardo, Thorbjørn Terndrup Nielsen, Mònica Campàs, and Alex Fragoso, has been published in Pharmaceutics.

Veratridine is a plant-derived neurotoxin that acts on voltage-gated sodium channels, making it acutely toxic to neuronal cells. The core question addressed here is whether cyclodextrin encapsulation can sequester the toxin and thereby mitigate its cytotoxic effects — an approach with potential relevance to antidote development.

Uribe and co-workers characterised inclusion complexes of veratridine with β-CD, γ-CD, and sulfobutyl ether β-CD using isothermal titration calorimetry, NMR spectroscopy, and computational modelling. Cell-based assays on Neuro-2a neuronal cells showed a concentration-dependent restoration of cell viability upon complexation, demonstrating a clear antidote-like effect and pointing toward new therapeutic possibilities for neurotoxin sequestration.