The exciting potential of nanotherapy in brain-tumor targeted drug delivery approaches

Introduction According to the National Brain Tumor Society, in 2016, approximately 688,096 Americans are living with a brain-tumor (http://braintumor.org/brain-tumor-information/brain-tumor-facts/). It is estimated that approximately 78,000 will be diagnosed, and 16,616 people will die from malignant brain-tumors in 2016. Brain-tumor is challenging to cure and therapy is limited by the lack of effective methods to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs across the central nervous system (CNS) barriers. The current treatment consists of surgical resection, followed by immunotherapy, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy (Pourgholi et al., 2016). However, the benefits of current treatment are quite insignificant to patients. Based on the aforementioned facts, in this review, approaches in CNS drug delivery to the brain-tumor using nanocarrier systems are briefly discussed.