Combining Multifunctional Delivery System with Blood-Brain Barrier Reversible Opening Strategy for the Enhanced Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Adv Healthc Mater. 2024 Mar;13(8):e2302939. doi: 10.1002/adhm.202302939. Epub 2023 Dec 26.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative illness characterized by intracellular tau-phosphorylation, β-amyloid (Aβ) plaques accumulation, neuroinflammation, and impaired behavioral ability. Owing to the lack of effective brain delivery approaches and the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), current AD therapeutic endeavors are severely limited. Herein, a multifunctional delivery system (RVG-DDQ/PDP@siBACE1) is elaborately combined with a protein kinase B (AKT) agonist (SC79) for facilitating RVG-DDQ/PDP@siBACE1 to target and penetrate BBB, enter brain parenchyma, and further accumulate in AD brain lesion. Moreover, compared with the unitary dose of RVG-DDQ/PDP@siBACE1, this collaborative therapy strategy exhibits a distinctive synergistic function including scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS), decreasing of Aβ production, alleviating neuroinflammation by promoting the polarized microglia into the anti-inflammatory M2-like phenotype and significantly enhancing the cognitive functions of AD mice. More strikingly, according to these results, an innovative signaling pathway "lncRNA MALAT1/miR-181c/BCL2L11" is found that can mediate the neuronal apoptosis of AD. Taken together, combining the brain targeted delivery system with noninvasive BBB opening can provide a promising strategy and platform for targeting treatment of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; BCL2L11; blood–brain barrier; delivery system; neuroinflammation.

MeSH terms

  • Alzheimer Disease* / therapy
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / metabolism
  • Animals
  • Blood-Brain Barrier / pathology
  • Mice
  • Neuroinflammatory Diseases
  • Reactive Oxygen Species / metabolism

Substances

  • Amyloid beta-Peptides
  • Reactive Oxygen Species