Nanoparticles for Glioblastoma Treatment

Glioblastoma multiforme is a primary brain tumor whose diagnosis carries with it a dismal prognosis for survival. The development of nanomedicine would lay a path to cross the hurdles that current treatments fail to overcome: the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the tumor’s immune microenvironment. Targeted drug delivery systems are responsible for releasing the chemotherapeutic drug into specific tumor cells, which in addition to allowing crossing the BBB, reduces the damage caused to healthy cells in conventional chemotherapy. However, this type of therapy is still in its infancy and its health effects are still being studied using murine models. The present project aims to determine whether the use of nanoparticles in targeted drug delivery for the treatment of glioblastoma has an inhibitory effect on tumor cell growth, so a systematic review was developed using a defined search strategy using the key terms focused on the research question. The steps and guidelines defined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) for systematic reviews were followed. The analysis of the data extracted from the articles included in the review indicates that there is an inhibitory effect on the proliferative activity of tumor cells and a reduction in tumor size when nanoparticles are used to encapsulate drugs in targeted delivery.