Nanotherapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease (AD): Past, present and future

Abstract

Drug delivery to the brain still remains highly challenging for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The development of new practical treatment modalities for the treatment of AD is currently a highly active area of research. Our lack of success in the development of effective therapies for AD is attributed to, but not limited to a number of factors including the complexity of the brain. Besides this, it is recognized that AD is multisystemic in nature and this presents numerous difficulties for the potential treatment of these disorders. Another important reason for the lack of development of effective drugs and drug delivery system for AD is inability to deliver drugs effectively to the brain due to the numerous protective barriers surrounding the CNS i.e. blood-brain barrier (BBB), blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB) and circumventricular organs (CVOs). Solutions to these problems require enhanced novel research activities that can address each of these problems. This review article provides a concise movement into the current and future applications of nanoparticulate drug delivery systems for the treatment of AD and explores the application of nanotechnology in clinical neuroscience to develop innovative therapeutic modalities for the AD.

Keywords::

• Alzheimer’s disease
• neurotherapeutics
• nanoparticles
• blood-brain barrier

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Department of Science and Technology (DST), and University Grant Commission (UGC), New Delhi for providing DST INSPIRE Fellowship to Shadab Md and GATE Fellowship to Mohammad Fazil as financial assistance.

Declaration of interest

The authors state no conflict of interest and have received no payment in the preparation of this manuscript.