Recently several advances have been done for delivery of anticancer agents in brain tumours, but their efficacy is limited due poor penetration through the lipophilic Blood-brain barrier (BBB). Invasive systems including convection enhanced delivery and disruption of BBB though are effective but are not always applicable because of their invasive nature. However various noninvasive methods including intranasal drug delivery to brain and colloidal drug delivery system which includes carriers like liposomes, microspheres, lipid microspheres, niosomes, nanoparticles, solid lipid nanoparticles, polymeric micelles, and dendrimers provides the promising ways for brain targeting. These colloidal systems allow access of non-transportable drugs across the BBB by masking their physico-chemical characteristics through their encapsulation in these systems. Nevertheless, intranasal route provides non-invasive, simple, rapid and convenient way of delivering drugs to the brain. This review indexes the major obstacles for brain tumours treatment including the structure of BBB and efflux transporters; and the efforts that have been used to circumvent BBB and deliver drugs into the brain.
The brain tumour treatment is one of the most challenging area in the field of oncology. The BBB which is composed of pericytes, astrocytes and tight junction prevents the entry of drug inside the brain, thus it remains untreated. Several invasive and non-invasive therapies have been used for bypassing the BBB. Moreover the use of colloidal drug nanocarriers have been improve the drug brain penetration with reduced side effect and improved therapeutic effect of drug. Also the intranasal route provides promising way overcoming the BBB which provide non-invasive and simpler way to deliver drug to brain by extraneuronal nose to brain pathway. But still the treatment of brain tumour is not very simple and convenient