Getting drugs to stay in the bloodstream longer is a big deal when it comes to treating chronic diseases. You see, a drug’s half-life—the time it takes for half of a given dose to be cleared from the body—determines how long its effect(s) last.

If a drug’s half-life is short—meaning it’s cleared quickly—patients will have to take the drug frequently. Given that someone with a chronic condition could be on the medication for many years—say, patients with severe hemophilia, who endure frequent infusions of clotting factors—a short half-life can translate into high cost. Depending on side effects and how the drug is administered, quality of life may also suffer.

Several years ago, Wayne Lencer, MD, a researcher in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and his collaborators Richard Blumberg, MD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Neil Simister, DPhil, at Brandeis University came up with a way to make protein-based drugs like clotting factors stay in the circulation longer: by keeping cells from grinding them up.

The first drug based on their work—a form of the factor IX clotting factor—just passed a Phase III clinical trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. …