Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 25, Issue 4, 2019

Multiple sclerosis is a high-frequency neurological disorder in young adults. Although there are some genetic and environmental factors that have been related to the onset of the disease, these are still not completely understood and nowadays multiple sclerosis can neither be prevented, nor its symptom effectively treated due to disease heterogeneity. For this reason, the search of prognostic factors and new therapeutic com Read More

Depressive disorders represent protean psychiatric illnesses with heterogeneous clinical manifestations and a multitude of comorbidities leading to severe disability. In spite of decades of research on the pathophysiogenesis of these disorders, the wide variety of pharmacotherapies currently used to treat them is based on the modulation of monoamines, whose alteration has been considered the neurobiological foundation of Read More

Background: Major depression is a frequent psychiatric disease. One- third of the depressive patients remain treatment-resistant; thus, it is urgent to find novel antidepressant drugs. Objective: In major depression, in several brain areas the neural networks involved and the alterations of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides are updated. According to these networks, new pharmacological agents and effective combinatio Read More

Background: In previous works, alterations of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in the brain areas involved in generalized epilepsy have been reported. Objective: We reviewed the alterations of these neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in the following brain areas involved in generalized epilepsy: hippocampus, hypothalamus, thalamus and cerebral cortex. In these brain areas, the neural networks are also actualized. The Read More

As irreplaceable energy sources of minimally invasive treatment, light and sound have, separately, laid solid foundations in their clinic applications. Constrained by the relatively shallow penetration depth of light, photodynamic therapy (PDT) typically involves involves superficial targets such as shallow seated skin conditions, head and neck cancers, eye disorders, early-stage cancer of esophagus, etc. For ultrasound-driven sono Read More

Low frequency ultrasound-assisted drug delivery has been widely investigated as a non-invasive method to enhance the transdermal penetration of drugs. Using this technique, a brief application of ultrasound is used to permeabilize skin for a prolonged time. In this review, an overview on ultrasound is detailed to help explain the parameters that could be modulated to obtain the desired ultrasound parameters for enhance Read More

Laponite based nanomaterials (LBNMs) are highly diverse regarding their mechanical, chemical, and structural properties, coupled with shape, size, mass, biodegradability and biocompatibility. These ubiquitous properties of LBNMs make them appropriate materials for extensive applications. These have enormous potential for effective and targeted drug delivery comprised of numerous biodegradable materials which results i Read More

The objective of the article is to provide a comprehensive review on the application of cyclodextrin complexation in the delivery of drugs, bioactive molecules or macromolecules, with more emphasis on targeted drug delivery. Classically the cyclodextrins have been considered only as a means of improving the solubility of drugs; however, many attempts have been made to use cyclodextrins as drug delivery carriers. The cyclod Read More

The first limiting barrier for the transport in the skin is the stratum corneum; different strategies have been developed to overcome this barrier, including chemical enhancers. However, these penetration enhancers have limitations, including toxic adverse effects. In this context, research into nanomaterials has provided new tools to increase the residence time of drugs by generating a reservoir, increasing the specificity of dru Read More