Chapter 3 - Colloidal systems for CNS drug delivery

The pharmaceutical treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders is the second largest area of therapy, following cardiovascular diseases. Nowadays, noninvasive drug delivery systems for CNS are actively studied. The development of these new delivery systems started with the discovery that properly surface-engineered colloidal vectors, and in particular liposomes and polymeric nanoparticles, with a diameter approximately 200nm, were shown to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) without apparent damage, and to deliver drugs or genetic materials into the brain. However, even if this ability was confirmed by confocal microscopy and measured by biodistribution experiments or by means of the pharmacological effect exerted by the embedded drugs, a clear understanding of the main characteristics of the colloidal systems that are important for BBB crossing is still lacking. It is also shown that the presence of the drug is able to modify the surface of these systems, with unpredictable results on the colloidal systems biodistribution; thus, the results obtained in the absence of the loaded drug have to be taken cautiously. Moreover, since the loaded drug is only a fraction of the colloidal system that is administered, the presence of the carrier in the body and into CNS, especially in the case of long-term therapies, might cause adverse effects not yet fully understood. Thus, even if promising results have been obtained, and some colloidal systems loaded with a drug are the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for human use (but not for brain targeting), a long way of research has to be done in order to use these drug delivery systems for the treatment of CNS pathologies.