New Delhi: In an exciting new development, researchers have created a unique method to deliver tuberculosis (TB) medicines directly to the brain, successfully bypassing the challenging blood-brain barrier (BBB) that limits the effectiveness of many brain TB medications. This innovative drug delivery approach can effectively treat brain TB, a life-threatening condition with a high mortality rate.
Central Nervous System Tuberculosis (CNS-TB), the form of TB that affects the brain, is one of the most dangerous types of TB, often leading to severe complications or death. A significant challenge in treating CNS-TB is that the drugs used to combat TB struggle to reach the brain due to the protective barrier known as the blood-brain barrier. This barrier prevents many medications from entering the brain, significantly limiting their effectiveness.
Traditional treatments often involve high doses of oral anti-TB drugs, which frequently fail to achieve effective concentrations in the cerebrospinal fluid because of the BBB. This limitation has highlighted the urgent need for more effective delivery methods that can target the brain directly.
Scientists at the Institute of Nano Science and Technology (INST) in Mohali, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, have used tiny particles made of a natural material called chitosan to deliver TB medicines directly to the brain via the nose, bypassing the BBB. The research team, led by Rahul Kumar Verma and including Krishna Jadhav, Agrim Jhilta, Raghuraj Singh, Eupa Ray, Vimal Kumar, Awadh Yadav, and Amit Kumar Singh, developed chitosan nano-aggregates. These are tiny clusters of nanoparticles made from chitosan, a biocompatible and biodegradable material.
The drug delivery technology employs a nose-to-brain (N2B) method that utilises the olfactory and trigeminal nerve pathways in the nasal cavity to bypass the BBB. By administering the drug through the nasal route, the nano-aggregates can transport the drugs directly into the brain, significantly improving drug bioavailability at the infection site.
Chitosan is known for its mucoadhesive properties, allowing the nano-aggregates to adhere to the nasal mucosa, which prolongs their release time and enhances therapeutic effectiveness. The spray-drying process used to form the nano-aggregates ensures stability, ease of intranasal administration, and efficient absorption into brain tissues, enabling more targeted treatment of CNS-TB.
Laboratory tests revealed that these particles adhered well to the nasal cavity and delivered significantly more medication into the cells compared to conventional TB drugs. When tested on mice infected with TB, the nasal delivery of these nano-aggregates reduced the number of bacteria in the brain by nearly 1,000 times more than in untreated mice.
This study is the first to demonstrate that delivering TB drugs through the nasal route using advanced particles can effectively treat brain TB. The new treatment not only ensures that the medicine reaches the brain but also helps reduce the inflammation caused by the infection. Published in the journal Nanoscale (Royal Society of Chemistry), this discovery has the potential to greatly improve treatment for individuals suffering from brain TB and could facilitate faster recovery.
Furthermore, this innovative delivery method could also be applied to treat other brain infections, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, brain tumours, and epilepsy by enabling efficient drug delivery to the brain.
BI Bureau
