Crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier: A 2026 Nanoparticle Patent and the Science Behind It
In April 2026, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining reported on a US patent granted to Johns Hopkins University in December 2025 for poloxamer-coated polymer nanoparticles designed to spread through brain tissue once past the blood-brain barrier. In rat studies, coated particles diffused through healthy brain tissue while uncoated ones stayed near the injection site, and in a model of aggressive brain tumour, the coated particles covered almost the entire tumour mass, including the invasive edges that standard delivery methods tend to miss. It is one more data point in a problem that has resisted a general solution for decades: getting a therapeutic molecule past the blood-brain barrier in a form the brain can actually use.
Brain Drug Delivery for the Treatment of Neurological Disorders, edited by Touraj Ehtezazi (Reader in Pharmaceutics, Liverpool John Moores University), is built around exactly that problem. Chapter 5, "Novel Nanoparticles as Drug Delivery Systems to the Brain," surveys the design principles behind particles like the ones in the Johns Hopkins patent, while companion chapters on exosomes (6) and monoclonal antibody targeting (7) cover the other two delivery platforms competing to solve the same barrier problem from different directions.
For formulation scientists, the book's value is in connecting design to execution. Three chapters in particular earn their place on a working bench rather than a reading shelf: the in vitro and in vivo evaluation methods (Chapters 8-9) that any new delivery candidate has to pass before it can be compared to work like the Johns Hopkins study; the hematological, immunological, and cytotoxic safety evaluations (Chapters 10-11) that determine whether a promising particle is actually safe to advance; and the industrial and regulatory chapters (13-14) that address the batch-consistency and approval questions a lab result doesn't answer on its own.
For pharmaceutical science departments and neuroscience research libraries, this is a reference that is hard to assemble from journals alone — it is the rare volume that puts delivery-system design, preclinical evaluation, and the regulatory pathway to the clinic between the same two covers, for a field where most published research covers only one of those stages at a time. CLNZ Books sources this title directly from CRC Press (Routledge), ships worldwide with secure card and PayPal payment, and provides institutional invoicing for library and department orders, as with every title in our Medicine collection.
Q&A
What problem does this book address?
How to deliver drugs across the blood-brain barrier to treat chronic, non-communicable neurological disorders — covering delivery system design, evaluation methods, and the regulatory pathway to clinical use.
Does the book cover the nanoparticle delivery approach used in recent blood-brain barrier research, like the 2025/2026 Johns Hopkins patent?
Yes. Chapter 5, "Novel Nanoparticles as Drug Delivery Systems to the Brain," covers the design principles behind this class of delivery system, alongside chapters on exosome and monoclonal antibody platforms.
Who edited this book?
Touraj Ehtezazi, Reader in Pharmaceutics at Liverpool John Moores University, with contributions from an international group of pharmaceutical scientists and clinicians.
Is this book relevant to industry and regulatory teams, or only academic researchers?
Both. Chapters 13 and 14 address industrial-scale production and the regulatory considerations required before a brain-targeted therapy can advance to clinical use.
Where can I buy Brain Drug Delivery for the Treatment of Neurological Disorders?
Directly from CLNZ Books, with worldwide shipping included and secure payment by credit card or PayPal.