<p>Innovative Therapies and Nanomedicine Applications for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease: A State-of-the-Art (2017–2020)</p>

Abstract

The field of nanomedicine is constantly expanding. Since the first work dated in 1999, almost 28 thousand articles have been published, and more and more are published every year: just think that only in the last five years 20,855 have come out (source PUBMED) including original research and reviews. The goal of this review is to present the current knowledge about nanomedicine in Alzheimer's disease, a widespread neurodegenerative disorder in the over 60 population that deeply affects memory and cognition. Thus, after a brief introduction on the pathology and on the state-of-the-art research for NPs passing the BBB, special attention is placed to new targets that can enter the interest of nanoparticle designers and to new promising therapies. The authors performed a literature review limited to the last three years (2017-2020) of available studies with the intention to present only novel formulations or approaches where at least in vitro studies have been performed. This choice was made because, while limiting the sector to nanotechnology applied to Alzheimer, an organic census of all the relevant news is difficult to obtain.

Advancements in the Blood–Brain Barrier Penetrating Nanoplatforms for Brain Related Disease Diagnostics and Therapeutic Applications

“…Many studies of human AD patients and AD animal models suggest that cerebrovascular alterations result from the accumulation of the Aβ peptide [ 108 , 110 ]. Even though the presence of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved available drugs to treat AD such as tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine, and memantine, an ideal carrier is highly desired to deliver the drugs to the brain via the BBB and increase the water solubility, in vivo half-life, and bioavailability [ 107 , 111 ]. It is proven that nanotechnology can deliver the drugs to the brain efficiently by crossing the BBB.…”

In Vitro Studies on Nasal Formulations of Nanostructured Lipid Carriers (NLC) and Solid Lipid Nanoparticles (SLN)

“…This barrier is a semipermeable membrane that maintains the CNS homeostasis, providing nutrient exchange between the brain and the blood. The presence of tight junctions of endothelial capillary cells restricts the passage of drugs, with smaller molecules weighing less than 400 Da and lipophilic molecules being the only ones that can easily cross this barrier [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

Nanomedicine: A Promising Way to Manage Alzheimer’s Disease

“…The synthesis of these NPs for drug delivery is an emerging approach, a multidisciplinary field that provides new understandings and opens avenues to manipulate materials, tissues, cells, and DNA with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 150 nm (Li S. et al, 2018;Cheng et al, 2019;Ovais et al, 2019). Nanomedicine has made considerable achievements in many fields including medicines, pharmacy, chemical/biological detection, and optics (Binda et al, 2020;Chen K. et al, 2020;Pan et al, 2020). The present study intends to provide an overview of how nanotechnology has revolutionized AD treatment/imaging and the understanding of cellular function by mainly focusing on the state-of-the-art nanomedicine-based approaches used for AD.…”