Feb 5 2009
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Drug Delivery Technology - Revolutionizing CNS Therapies" report to their offering.
"The World Health Organization has indicated that CNS disorders are the major medical challenge of the 21st Century, yet treatments for most CNS disorders are either inadequate or absent. The CNS is the most challenging frontier for drug discovery largely because of the complexity of the brain and the existence of the BBB"
Alan Palmer, Chief Executive of Pharmidex, UK
The revenue derived from Central Nervous System (CNS) drugs is vast, in that such a large number of diseases and disease processes are grouped under the CNS "umbrella". These include acute organic conditions, such as infection, pain (both acute and chronic); chronic organic conditions such as neoplasms, seizure disorders; chronic degenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and other dementias, as well as the range of functional disorders classified as mental illnesses: schizophrenia, affective and anxiety spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), sleep disorders and addictions.
The CNS has always posed problems in terms of drug delivery, drug efficacy and safety/ tolerability because of the presence of the blood brain barrier (BBB). The BBB is composed of a layer of extremely tightly packed epithelial cells, saturated with enzymes designed to protect the brain by disallowing the entry of noxious substances via the bloodstream. The unfortunate by-product of this has been the problem of delivering beneficial drugs to the CNS in sufficient quantities to effectively treat the targeted condition without causing unacceptable systemic adverse reactions.
Administering drugs directly into the CNS e.g. intrathecally or intracerebrally, is an effective method of delivery but carries significant risks in terms of infection as well as being invasive and unpleasant for the patient. In recent years, methods of by-passing the BBB have been proposed, trialed and are now available, such as osmotic permeability, the use of nanoparticles small enough to penetrate the BBB, ultrasonic adjunctive drug treatment, and stem-cell and gene therapy, which effectively provide a "self-cure" by promoting neuroplasticity and cell regeneration within the central nervous system itself.
Newer delivery methods such as transdermal drug delivery which can employ nanotechnology to increase absorption and bioavailability, as well as being non-invasive and simple to use are on the rise, and seem set to be used for a wide range of CNS disorders, including psychoses, pain and neurodegenerative disorders.