The Role of Nanotechnologies in Brain Tumors

The treatment of glioma remains one of the most interesting topics in neurooncology. Glioblastoma multiforme is the most aggressive and prevalent malignantMalignant brain tumorBrain tumor. Nowadays, technologies and new tools are helping the neurosurgeons to define a tailored surgery. However, there are few pharmaceutical strategies in operated and nonoperated patients. There are still few anticancer drugs approved by FDA and EMAEpithelial Membrane Antigen (EMA). Moreover, these drugs are not so effective and have a lot of side effects due to their toxicityToxicity. NanoparticlesNanoparticles are a new strategy which could help to create and carry new drugs. In fact, NPs improve the pharmacokineticPharmacokinetic properties of anticancer drugs, reduce side-effects, and increase drug half-life and its selectivity. Nanoparticle drug delivery systemDrug delivery system has been studied for targeting different molecular biomarkers and signaling pathwaysPathway. Furthermore, the first problem of anticancer drugs in the treatment of gliomas is penetrating the blood brain barrierBlood-Brain Barrier (BBB) which represents an insurmountable wall for most of synthetic and natural particles. In the last 15 years, a lot of researches tried to design a perfect nanoparticleNanoparticles both able to cross blood–brain barrierBlood-Brain Barrier (BBB) and to selectively target gliomaGlioma cells, unfortunately, without great results. In vivo human trials are still ongoing and many of them have already failed. In this chapter we evaluate the effectiveness of nanotechnologies in the treatment of brain tumorsBrain tumor. There is not yet, currently, a nanoparticle drug designed for the treatment of gliomas approved by FDA and EMAEpithelial Membrane Antigen (EMA). Advancements in discovery of molecular characteristics of tumors leadLead to the development of targeted nanoparticlesNanoparticles that are tested in numerous in vitro and in vivo studies on gliomas. Novel and repurposed drugs, as well as novel drug combinations, have also been already studied but those are not included in this chapter because the carried drugs (active substances) are not included among the approved anticancer drug used in the treatment of gliomas.