Advanced Blood-Brain Barrier Drug Delivery

Abstract

Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Preface to "Advanced Blood-Brain Barrier Drug Delivery"This Special Issue of Pharmaceutics, "Advanced Blood-Brain Barrier Drug Delivery", comprises 17 articles, which cover five areas of brain drug delivery, including receptor-mediated transport (RMT), carrier-mediated transport (CMT), active efflux transport (AET), Trojan horse lipid nanoparticles (LNP), and the in vivo measurement of drug transport across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The articles on RMT describe the genetic engineering of IgG fusion proteins, wherein the IgG domain targets an endogenous peptide receptor at the BBB. The IgG domain of the fusion protein acts as a molecular Trojan horse to ferry the fused biologic agentinto the brain, which alone does not cross the BBB. Endogenous CMT systems for the brain drug delivery of small molecules include the GLUT1 glucose transporter, the LAT1 large neutral amino acid transporter, and others. AET systems at the BBB cause the active efflux of small-molecule drugs from brain to blood, and include carriers in the Solute Carrier (SLC) and the ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter super-families. Trojan horse LNPs are formulated to access RMT systems at the BBB for the brain delivery of mRNA or plasmid DNA. Articles in this Special Issue critically evaluate the in vivo measurement of drug transport into brain.