Abstract

The main obstacle for brain drug delivery after systemic administration is the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The use of drug nanocarriers to overcome this selective barrier that isolates the central nervous system (CNS) has been widely studied in recent years. Among the different nanoparticles described in literature, inorganic nanoparticles such as gold, iron oxide, carbon, silver, and others have been studied for brain drug delivery. Here, we describe the strategies employed with different inorganic nanoparticles to reach the CNS, which in general used targeting molecules that can facilitate the transport across the BBB through transport mechanisms such as adsorptive-mediated transcytosis and receptor-mediated transport or the use of peptide vectors. Throughout this chapter, examples of diverse nanosystems will be given, highlighting the main research objectives, their characteristics, and the results obtained.