Advances in Brain Targeted Drug Delivery: Nanoparticulate Systems

Abstract

Drug delivery to the brain is always a challenging task for the formulation scientists because of low permeation due to presence of blood brain barrier (BBB) with tight junctions in the brain endothelial cells. Even though numerous traditional approaches such as prodrugs, disruption of blood brain barrier have shown some success to overcome these challenges, researchers are continuously working for alternatives for better delivery of drug to brain. Recent advances in nanotechnology offer an appropriate solution for the drug delivery problems associated with the brain targeted drug delivery. The present review describes various nanotechnology based formulations such as polymeric nanoparticles, solid lipid nanoparticles, liposomes, dendrimers, miscelles and nanoemulsions which have been widely used for the better delivery of the drugs across blood brain barrier. Furthermore, components of blood brain barrier, general transport mechanisms across BBB and possible mechanisms of enhanced transport of nanoformulations to the brain have been discussed in detail. Moreover several ligand based targeted systems for the active drug delivery to the brain have also been discussed.