An Overview of Recent Patents on Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery Across the Blood Brain Barrier

This review summarizes the patents that have been reported in the last ten years on nanoparticles for the delivery of drugs to the brain. Nanoparticles are promising brain delivery modalities that can be coated or loaded with drug, or conjugated with various enhancers; they also demonstrate high stability compared with other nanocarriers. There are various pathways by which nanoparticles enable drug delivery into the brain across the blood brain barrier, which does not allow the passage of most therapeutic agents. Based on an assessment of recent patents, these pathways include, (1) through attaching or containing an enhancer to pass the BBB, (2) brain targeting could be achieved by comprising an agent that is able to deliver the drug into the specified brain tissue and (3) controlling of nanoparticle delivery by external stimuli. It can be concluded that brain delivery is still at its infancy as there is still a huge prospect to investigate enhancement mechanisms.