Brain Drug Delivery System: An Overview

Drug delivery to brain or brain targeting is one of the most challenging research areas in pharmaceutical sciences. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents an insurmountable obstacle for a large number of drugs, including antibiotics, antineoplastic agents, and a variety of central nervous system (CNS)-active drugs, especially neuropeptides and drugs which do not pass the blood brain barrier. Therefore, various strategies have been proposed to improve the delivery of different drugs to this tissue which includes liposomes, colloidal drug carriers, micelles, chimeric peptide technology, intranasal and olfactory route of administration and nano technology. This review deals in brief about the status of the BBB, different pathologies of brain like neurodegenerative, cerebrovascular and inflammatory diseases. The first part of this article aims to review the strategies developed to circumvent the BBB and deliver drugs into the brain. The use of nano technology and liposomes are discussed which are crucial part of this article as mainly used to target various CNS disorders. The later part of this article contains future aspects of brain drug targeting.