Central nervous system delivery of molecules across the blood-brain barrier

Therapies targeting neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases are hampered by the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). During the last decades, several approaches have been developed to overcome the BBB, such as the use of nanoparticles (NPs) based on biomaterials, or alternative methods to open the BBB. In this review, we briefly highlight these strategies and the most recent advances in this field. Limitations and advantages of each approach are discussed. Combination of several methods such as functionalized NPs targeting the receptor-mediated transcytosis system with the use of magnetic resonance imaging-guided focused ultrasound (FUS) might be a promising strategy to develop theranostic tools as well as to safely deliver therapeutic molecules, such as drugs, neurotrophic factors or antibodies within the brain parenchyma.This work has been supported under the Euronanomed 8th Joint Call-MAGGBRIS collaborative project by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PCIN-2017-090) and Instituto Salud Carlos III (AC17/00004 with FEDER funds) and from the French national agency (ANR-ANR-17-ENM3-0005-01) for FG and RAL. This work has also been supported by the SGR program (2017SGR1427 and 2017SGR765 grants) from the Generalitat de Catalunya. MC thanks the support of the ANR in the framework of the Diasyn project (ERA-Net Euronanomed II JTC2015 grant number: ANR-15 -ENM2 -0002-06).Peer reviewe