Nanoparticles for Brain Targeting

Nanoparticles are solid colloidal particles ranging in size from 1 to 1000 nm that are utilized as drug delivery agents. The blood brain barrier represents an insurmountable obstacle for a large number of drugs including antibiotics, antineoplastic and a variety of CNS active drugs especially neuropeptides. One of the possibilities to overcome this barrier is a drug delivery to brain using nanoparticles. The use of nanoparticles to deliver drugs to the brain across the blood brain barrier may provide a significant advantage to current strategies. The primary advantage of nanoparticles carrier technology is that nanoparticles mask the blood brain barrier limiting the characteristics of the therapeutics, drug molecules and it also decreasing peripheral toxicity by causing slow drug release in the brain. The nanoparticles may be especially helpful for the treatment of the disseminated and very aggressive brain tumors. The mechanism of nanoparticles mediated transport of drugs is mostly endocytosis by endothelial cells lining the brain blood capillaries. Physiological factors such as phagocytic activity of reticulo endothelial system and opsonization may limit the amount of brain delivered drug.