Nanobiomedical engineering strategies for aging-associated brain diseases therapy

Aging is a general risk for multiple age-related diseases. Accumulated evidences gradually revealed the underlay mechanisms of aging and thus novel therapeutic interventions were supposed. Emerging nanotechnology boosted the development of therapeutic agents and showed great potential in multiple age-related diseases treatments, especially for brain-associated diseases, due to the superior biology barrier accessibility of nanoparticles. Neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumor are the most common aging-associated brain diseases, which incidences increased with age. Current therapeutic options for neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumor are limited in available brain-blood barrier penetrable delivery vehicles and more selective therapeutic targets. In this thesis, we first gave an introduction to the recent advances in aging research and nano-delivery systems. Then moved to a series of nanoparticle-based brain delivery strategies developing and further applied in representative aging-associated brain diseases, such as Alzheimer`s disease and glioblastoma model. Novel bionic sugar decorated polymeric nanoparticles and peptide decorated exosome were applied for targeted brain delivery. In the meanwhile, different formulas of therapeutic agents including chemical drugs and siRNAs were used to evaluate the functional cargo release and pathology amelioration efficacy. These strategies may be applied in biotech drug therapeutics developments for a broad spectrum of aging-associated diseases towards targeting and controlled release challenges.