Advances in Preclinical/Clinical Glioblastoma Treatment: Can Nanoparticles Be of Help?

Abstract

Glioblastoma multiforme (GB) is the most aggressive and frequent primary malignant tumor in the central nervous system (CNS), with unsatisfactory and challenging treatment nowadays. Current standard of care includes surgical resection followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However, these treatments do not much improve the overall survival of GB patients, which is still below two years (the 5-year survival rate is below 7%). Despite various approaches having been followed to increase the release of anticancer drugs into the brain, few of them demonstrated a significant success, as the blood brain barrier (BBB) still restricts its uptake, thus limiting the therapeutic options. Therefore, enormous efforts are being devoted to the development of novel nanomedicines with the ability to cross the BBB and specifically target the cancer cells. In this context, the use of nanoparticles represents a promising non-invasive route, allowing to evade BBB and reducing systemic concentration of drugs and, hence, side effects. In this review, we revise with a critical view the different families of nanoparticles and approaches followed so far with this aim.

Targeting brain tumors with innovative nanocarriers: bridging the gap through the blood-brain barrier

“…In addition, it was also affirmed that BBB’s permeability varied according to the brain tumor’s location, indicating that this heterogeneity poses a challenge in drug delivery [ 34 ]. Numerous nano-based drug delivery systems that can effectively transport the drug to the brain by the voyage of BBB have been formulated and developed with unique targeting mechanisms and provide a better anti-tumor therapeutic effect [ 35 , 36 ]. The present section highlights the numerous nanocarrier systems, including liposomes and polymeric micelles, exosomes, carbon-based NPs, metallic NPs, and other biomimetic systems that are believed to be most suitable for clinical translation.…”

Glioblastoma Therapy: Past, Present and Future

“…Other advantages of NPs include the following: (1) nanoencapsulation increases their half-life activity, for instance in the case of TMZ-loaded chitosan NPs from 1.8 to 13.4 h [ 897 ]; (2) they can incorporate additional fluorescent/MRI/radioactive compounds that allow the non-invasive monitoring of its biodistribution [ 898 ]; (3) they increase hydrophobic drug solubility while favoring a proper biodistribution and evading the mononuclear phagocyte system catabolism; (4) they can combine different additional therapeutic approaches, such as (although not exclusively) radiotherapy sensitization, immune cells stimulation, or induction of heat/ROS [ 899 ].…”

Platinum-Based Nanoformulations for Glioblastoma Treatment: The Resurgence of Platinum Drugs?

“…The use of nanoparticles (NPs) to increase the i.v. local delivery of drugs into the brain is one of the most promising approaches [ 80 , 81 ]. Their small size and large surface area are suitable to increase the solubility and bioavailability of the anticancer drugs, facilitating BBB diffusion and concentrating higher CT doses in the brain parenchyma [ 82 ].…”