The influence of the blood–brain barrier in the treatment of brain tumours

Jan 18, 2022Journal of internal medicine

How the blood-brain barrier affects treatment of brain tumors

AI simplified

mRNA Technology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) may hinder effective drug delivery to brain tumours, complicating treatment efforts.

Brain tumours often have a poor prognosis and limited treatment options.
The blood-brain tumour barrier (BBTB) is characterized by heterogeneous disruption within tumours.
Current reliance on the disrupted BBTB for drug delivery has not achieved clinical success.
Strategies to overcome the normal BBB could improve drug delivery for treating brain tumours.
A better understanding of BBB limitations may facilitate the development of more effective therapies.

AI simplified

Brain tumours have a poor prognosis and lack effective treatments. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents a major hurdle to drug delivery to brain tumours. In some locations in the tumour, the BBB may be disrupted to form the blood-brain tumour barrier (BBTB). This leaky BBTB enables diagnosis of brain tumours by contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging; however, this disruption is heterogeneous throughout the tumour. Thus, relying on the disrupted BBTB for achieving effective drug concentrations in brain tumours has met with little clinical success. Because of this, it would be beneficial to design drugs and drug delivery strategies to overcome the 'normal' BBB to effectively treat the brain tumours. In this review, we discuss the role of BBB/BBTB in brain tumour diagnosis and treatment highlighting the heterogeneity of the BBTB. We also discuss various strategies to improve drug delivery across the BBB/BBTB to treat both primary and metastatic brain tumours. Recognizing that the BBB represents a critical determinant of drug efficacy in central nervous system tumours will allow a more rapid translation from basic science to clinical application. A more complete understanding of the factors, such as BBB-limited drug delivery, that have hindered progress in treating both primary and metastatic brain tumours, is necessary to develop more effective therapies.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (PDF) ↗View full text (XML) ↗View full text ↗

The influence of the blood–brain barrier in the treatment of brain tumours

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the mrna technology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the mrna technology brief