Challenges and New Strategies for Therapeutic Peptide Delivery to the CNS

Abstract

Therapeutic peptides represent a largely untapped resource in medicine today, especially in the central nervous system. Despite their ease of design and remarkably high target specificity, it is difficult to deliver them beyond the blood–brain barrier or into the required intracellular compartments. In addition, the instability of these peptides in vivo precludes their use to combat the symptoms of numerous neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease and spinocerebellar ataxia. In this review, we aim to characterize recent advances in the delivery of therapeutic peptides to the central nervous system past the blood–brain barrier and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the examined methods as well as explore new potential directions.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.