Drug discovery today
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Drug discovery today · Dec 2008
ReviewModern multiple sclerosis treatment - what is approved, what is on the horizon.
In the mid-1990s, the implementation of the immunomodulatory drugs interferon-beta and glatiramer acetate offered the first evidence-based treatment option for multiple sclerosis (MS). These new drugs were beneficial in a huge number of MS patients worldwide, leading to a delay in disease-related disability. ⋯ It will presumably be followed by several other more specific, more effective and more comfortable therapies within the next few years. Here, we will show the current MS treatment options as well as recent progress in the field, and we will introduce the potential new treatment options for future MS therapy.
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Drug discovery today · Dec 2008
ReviewThe targeted delivery of cancer drugs across the blood-brain barrier: chemical modifications of drugs or drug-nanoparticles?
One of the most challenging problems, if not the most challenging, in drug development is not to develop drugs to treat diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), but to manage to distribute them to the CNS across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) using transvascular routes following intravenous administration. The development of BBB targeting technologies is a very active field of research and development. One goal is to develop chemically modified derivatives of drugs or chemically modified nanoparticulate vectors of drugs, capable of crossing biological barriers, in particular the BBB. This manuscript will review the approaches that have been explored to achieve these goals, using chemical functionalization of drugs or of drug vector systems and endogenous transporters at the BBB.