Recent advances in carrier mediated nose-to-brain delivery of pharmaceutics

Central nervous system (CNS) disorders (e.g., multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.) represent a growing
public health issue, primarily due to the increased life expectancy and the aging population. The treatment of
such disorders is notably elaborate and requires the delivery of therapeutics to the brain in appropriate amounts
to elicit a pharmacological response. However, despite the major advances both in neuroscience and drug delivery
research, the administration of drugs to the CNS still remains elusive. It is commonly accepted that effectiveness-
related issues arise due to the inability of parenterally administered macromolecules to cross the
Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) in order to access the CNS, thus impeding their successful delivery to brain tissues. As
a result, the direct Nose-to-Brain delivery has emerged as a powerful strategy to circumvent the BBB and deliver
drugs to the brain. The present review article attempts to highlight the different experimental and computational
approaches pursued so far to attain and enhance the direct delivery of therapeutic agents to the brain and shed
some light on the underlying mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of neurological disorders.