Ricerc@Sapienza

In 2017, World Health Organization have recognized dementia as a public health priority and for this reason have endorsed the ¿Global action plan on the public health response to dementia 2017-2025¿, to improve the research about it.
Dementia or Alzheimer¿s disease (AD) is a chronic and irreversible neurodegenerative disorder which mainly affects the older people worldwide. Currently, there is no treatment available to cure dementia or to alter its progressive course, for this reason the treatment of AD still remains a great challenge and the development of new strategies represents an active area of research. The major obstacle for the treatment of AD is the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), that protects the brain from pathogens and toxic substances, including drugs and for maintaining its homeostasis. Many studies have demonstrated the promising effects of medicinal plant extracts on several CNS diseases including AD, in particular, curcumin (CUR) extracted from Curcuma longa.
The aim of this project is to develop novel drug delivery system, able to deliver into the brain a natural compound CUR useful for the treatment of AD, co-entrapped with a gas.
To get this aim, we will go beyond the state-of-art of contrast agents and theranostic agents, tailoring phospholipid coating of nanobubbles to bypass the blood-brain barrier and deliver active substances to the brain inducing considerably less, if any, peripheral uptake and adverse effect than conventional formulation.