Abstract
It’s been nearly 100 y of effort to study the organization and role of the blood brain-barrier and still, we strive to find better techniques to overcome this barrier to deliver the drugs to the brain effectively with reduced systemic side effects. The advances in nanotechnology have given newer horizons in achieving this goal since the nano-scaled systems can modify an existing drug to have a high degree of sensitivity to the physiological conditions and specificity to reach the target organ. Among the various nanocarriers, dendrimers owing to their unique physical and chemical characteristics, represent a potential therapeutic tool in biomedical and pharmaceutical science. Dendrimers, an established polymeric nanocarrier system of the time, can deliver both drugs and genetic material and are being extensively studied to target the brain. The surface modification of dendrimers can reduce their innate toxicity problems and increase the therapeutic efficacy of brain disorders. This review article is an attempt to update on the potential of dendrimers explored in the past five years as a drug delivery avenue that can be considered as a promising solution in the management of a wide range of disorders affecting the central nervous system, including neoplastic, degenerative, and ischemic conditions. The following search criteria were used to expand the review article with the keywords dendrimers, novel drug delivery, nanoparticles, site-specific drug delivery etc.
Highlights
The diseases affecting the brain are numerous, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, head trauma, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain cancer, epilepsy, and stroke
There is a remarkable rise in the proportion of the population around the world being affected by various CNS disorders every year, especially with the aging population due to the increased life expectancy
The advances in nanotechnology presents the amazing potential of dendrimers as nanocarriers for brain delivery and some of the recent impeccable works done in this direction has been discussed in this article
Summary
The diseases affecting the brain are numerous, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, head trauma, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain cancer, epilepsy, and stroke. This review will mainly focus on the recent therapeutic advances using dendrimers for brain delivery of drugs and nucleic acids for the various CNS disorders. The B-CSFB owing to the choroid plexus passively regulates the passage of drugs into CSF by the presence of tight junctions and actively by its organic acid efflux transporters and at arachnoid membrane, this barrier is passively impermeable to hydrophilic substances to a great extent [15]. The size of the drug and its charge are prime factors where molecular weight greater than 400-500 Da do not cross the BBB (with some exceptions) in pharmacologically significant amounts [20] To overcome these challenges, currently, there are various strategies of drug delivery to the brain. - Stadol NS®, Stimate NS, Syneral® Nasal Solution, Zomig Nasal Spray - Delivery of GDNF in Parkinson’s disease, molecularly targeted recombinant chimera cytotoxic fusion proteins in anti-GBM therapy
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