Amphiphilic Nanocarrier Systems for Curcumin Delivery in Neurodegenerative Disorders

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases have become a major challenge for public health because of their incurable status. Soft nanotechnology provides potential for slowing down the progression of neurodegenerative disorders by using innovative formulations of neuroprotective antioxidants like curcumin, resveratrol, vitamin E, rosmarinic acid, 7,8-dihydroxyflavone, coenzyme Q10, and fish oil. Curcumin is a natural, liposoluble compound, which is of considerable interest for nanomedicine development in combination therapies. The neuroprotective effects of combination treatments can involve restorative mechanisms against oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, and protein aggregation. Despite the anti-amyloid and anti-tau potential of curcumin and its neurogenesis-stimulating properties, the utilization of this antioxidant as a drug in neuroregenerative therapies has huge limitations due to its poor water solubility, physico-chemical instability, and low oral bioavailability. We highlight the developments of soft lipid- and polymer-based delivery carriers of curcumin, which help improve the drug solubility and stability. We specifically focus on amphiphilic liquid crystalline nanocarriers (cubosome, hexosome, spongosome, and liposome particles) for the encapsulation of curcumin with the purpose of halting the progressive neuronal loss in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Therapeutic Applications of Curcumin Nanomedicine Formulations in Cardiovascular Diseases

“…Nanomedicine is bridging the gap between pharmaceutical limitations and the therapeutic potentials of natural phytochemicals by improving the compound's targeting, pharmacokinetics, efficacy, and cellular uptake [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Many studies have focused on CUR nanotechnology mediated drug delivery formulations in optimization the therapeutics uses of CUR for various diseases, such as cancer therapy [81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90], neurodegenerative disorders [91,92], wound healing [93], diabetes [94,95], and inflammatory diseases [96]. A wide variety of nanomedicine-based drug delivery systems are used to deliver CUR such as liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, dendrimers, solid lipid nanoparticles, dendrosomes, nanogels, micelles, niosomes, cyclodextrin inclusion complexes, silver and gold nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, nanoemulsions, nanosuspensions, exosomes, nanocrystals, and mesoporous silica nanoparticles.…”

Recent Advancements of Nanomedicine in Neurodegenerative Disorders Theranostics

“…According to a recent report, a soft lipid‐based nanocurcumin (improving its stability and solubility) was developed, which demonstrated promising results in inhibiting neuronal loss in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, and Huntington's diseases. [ 51 ]…”

Antioxidant Alternatives in the Treatment of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Comprehensive Review

“…Curcumin is a natural and liposoluble dye obtained from turmeric ( Table 1). It has neuroprotective effects and provides protection against OS (Kim et al, 2012), mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation and protein aggregation (Ullah et al, 2017;Rakotoarisoa and Angelova, 2018;Ghasemi et al, 2019).…”

“…A study indicates that a drug delivery system based on curcumin will be proposed for the treatment of ALS (Tripodo et al, 2015) but others indicate that the use of curcumin as therapy in ALS has disadvantages: chemical instability and low oral bioavailability and water solubility rate (Rakotoarisoa and Angelova, 2018) (Table 1). Therefore, it is necessary to develop new technologies to overcome these limitations (Liu et al, 2016).…”