Lomustine Nanoparticles Enable Both Bone Marrow Sparing and High Brain Drug Levels - A Strategy for Brain Cancer Treatments.

Purpose: The blood brain barrier compromises glioblastoma chemotherapy. However high blood concentrations of lipophilic, alkylating drugs result in brain uptake, but cause myelosuppression. We hypothesised that nanoparticles could achieve therapeutic brain concentrations without dose-limiting myelosuppression.

Nanomedicines and nanodiagnostics come of age.

Although the employment of biomedical colloids is not new, modern biomedical colloids, termed nanomedicines and nanodiagnostics, have enhanced functionality, in that the drug compound/diagnostic probe entrapped within the nanoparticle takes on the properties of the encapsulating nanoparticle. The nanoparticle's properties are specifically dictated by its size, shape, and surface chemistry; the net result in the case of medicines is an alteration of the drug's intrinsic pharmacokinetics and eventual drug targeting to the areas of pathology. The first nanomedicines, which really altered the pharmacokinetics of a drug molecule, were licensed in the early-to-mid 1990s.

Enhanced oral absorption of hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs using quaternary ammonium palmitoyl glycol chitosan nanoparticles.

As 95% of all prescriptions are for orally administered drugs, the issue of oral absorption is central to the development of pharmaceuticals. Oral absorption is limited by a high molecular weight (>500 Da), a high log P value (>2.0) and low gastrointestinal permeability.