Lipid Based Nanoparticles: Current Strategies for Brain Tumor Targeting

Abstract

Brain tumors arise from an uncontrolled proliferation of neural tissue cells or supportive glial tissue cells within the brain. The diagnosis and therapy of brain tumor is an extremely challenging task. Moreover, absence of early stage symptoms and consequently delays in diagnosis and therapy worsen its severity. Though in the present days, chemotherapeutic approach is the most common therapeutic approach; still it is linked with several precincts. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is the main hurdle in delivering most of the chemotherapeutic agents as well as imaging agent that leads to insufficient accumulation of therapeutic / imaging agents at tumor site, and prevents adequate destruction of malignant cells. Recently, lipid based nanoparticles are gaining much more interest and are preferred over polymeric nanoparticles owing to their biodegradability, non-toxicity, excellent tumortargeting ability and ease of surface modification. Certain receptors are over expressed in brain tumor cells which confer an opportunity to the researchers for delivering the chemotherapeutic as well as imaging agent particularly to the tumor cells through the surface modification approach of nanoparticles. Ligands like proteins/peptides, carbohydrates, aptamers, antibodies, and antibody fragments are generally conjugated to the surface of the nanoparticles that bind specifically to an over expressed target on the brain tumor cell surface. In the present review, we discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic application of various types of lipid based nanoparticles such as liposomes, niosomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carrier, lipid nanocapsule, and lipid polymer hybrid nanocarriers along with their various surface modified forms for targeting brain tumor.