Advances in Nanotechnology for Drug Delivery Modulation in Neurodegenerative Diseases

As aging populations continue to grow due to the increased life expectancy, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease are expected to continue to increase. At advanced stages, many neurodegenerative diseases are highly debilitating, constituting a very high economic and societal burden. Accordingly, therapeutics are required to slow down or prevent the advancement of these diseases. However, there are major obstacles for drugs used to treat neurodegenerative diseases: the blood-brain barrier, the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier, and efflux pumps. Nanoparticles are a promising strategy to allow targeted drug delivery to the brain, providing an effective platform to deliver drugs at the required therapeutic concentrations while protecting bodily tissue from the drugs’ unwanted side effects. Furthermore, nanoparticles are capable of increasing a drugs’ bioavailability via enhancing the drugs solubility and masking them from degradation. This work aims to address the most recent advances in nanotechnological drug delivery systems for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases by evaluating the current progress in organic and inorganic nanomaterials; the organic nanomaterials include polymeric nanoparticles and lipid-based nanoparticles while the inorganic nanomaterials include metallic nanoparticles, porous nanoparticles, and magnetic nanoparticles.