From blood to brain: blood cell-based biomimetic drug delivery systems

Drug Deliv. 2021 Dec;28(1):1214-1225. doi: 10.1080/10717544.2021.1937384. Epub 2021 Jun 18.

Abstract

Brain drug delivery remains a major difficulty for several challenges including the blood-brain barrier, lesion spot targeting, and stability during circulation. Blood cells including erythrocytes, platelets, and various subpopulations of leukocytes have distinct features such as long-circulation, natural targeting, and chemotaxis. The development of biomimetic drug delivery systems based on blood cells for brain drug delivery is growing fast by using living cells, membrane coating nanotechnology, or cell membrane-derived nanovesicles. Blood cell-based vehicles are superior delivery systems for their engineering feasibility and versatile delivery ability of chemicals, proteins, and all kinds of nanoparticles. Here, we focus on advances of blood cell-based biomimetic carriers for from blood to brain drug delivery and discuss their translational challenges in the future.

Keywords: Blood brain barrier; biomimetic; blood cells; brain drug delivery.

MeSH terms

  • Biomimetic Materials / metabolism*
  • Biomimetics
  • Blood Cells / metabolism*
  • Blood-Brain Barrier / metabolism*
  • Brain Diseases / drug therapy
  • Drug Carriers
  • Drug Delivery Systems / methods*
  • Drug Stability
  • Humans
  • Nanotechnology / methods*

Substances

  • Drug Carriers

Grants and funding

The work was supported by the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Plan (No. 2016TP2002) and Hunan Research Plan of Chinese Traditional Medicine (No. 2021170).