Nanocarriers for Brain Targeting: Principles and Applications

This new volume, Nanocarriers for Brain Targeting: Principles and Applications, covers recent research on brain physiology and the development of drug delivery systems. It explores a diverse variety of strategies that can be employed to achieve drug targeting to the brain. The nanocarriers that are discussed include nanoparticles, vesicular carriers, carriers having carbon as a core constituent, dispersed systems, and more.

The inherent anatomy and physiology of the brain renders it different from other organs. The past few decades have witnessed significant research on brain ailments in response to a majority of hospitalizations that occur due to age-related central nervous system disorders. The prevalence of diverse diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, HIV-dementia, etc., affect about 1.5 billion people globally, which is further anticipated to reach 1.9 billion by the year 2020. Nanocarriers for drug delivery to the brain are seen as one of the answers to this growing problem.

<b>Raj K. Keservani, MPharm,</b> is a faculty of pharmaceutics at Sagar Institute of Research and Technology-Pharmacy, Bhopal, India. He has more than seven years of academic (teaching) experience from various institutes of India in pharmaceutical education. He has published 30 peer-reviewed papers in the field of pharmaceutical sciences in national and international journals, fifteen book chapters, two co-authored books, and two edited books. He is also active as a reviewer for several international scientific journals. Mr. Keservani graduated with a pharmacy degree from the Department of Pharmacy, Kumaun University, Nainital (UA), India. He received his Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) (specialization in pharmaceutics) from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal, India. His research interests include nutraceutical and functional foods, novel drug delivery systems (NDDS), transdermal drug delivery/ drug delivery, health science, cancer biology, and neurobiology.

<b>Anil K. Sharma, MPharm,</b> is working as a lecturer at the Delhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research, University of Delhi, India. He has more than six years of academic experience in pharmaceutical sciences. He has published 26 peer-reviewed papers in the field of pharmaceutical sciences in national and international journals as well as 12 book chapters. He received a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India, and a Master of Pharmacy degree from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal, India, with a specialization in pharmaceutics. His research interests encompass nutraceutical and functional foods, novel drug delivery systems (NDDS), drug delivery, nanotechnology, health science/life science, and biology/cancer biology/neurobiology.

<b>Rajesh K. Kesharwani, PhD, is affiliated with the Department of Advanced Science & Technology, NIET, Nims University Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. He has more than seven years of research and two years of teaching experience in various institutes of India, imparting bioinformatics and biotechnology education. He has received several awards, including the NASI-Swarna Jayanti Puruskar-2013 by The National Academy of Sciences of India. He has authored over 32 peer-reviewed articles and ten book chapters. He has been a member of many scientific communities as well as a reviewer for many international journals. Dr. Kesharwani received a BSc in biology from Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, India, an autonomous college of the University of Allahabad; his MSc (Biochemistry) from Awadesh Pratap Singh University, Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, India; and MTech-IT (specialization in Bioinformatics) from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India. He earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, and received a Ministry of Human Resource Development (India) Fellowship and Senior Research Fellowship from the Indian Council of Medical Research, India. His research fields of interest are medical informatics, protein structure and function prediction, computer-aided drug designing, structural biology, drug delivery, cancer biology, and next-generation sequence analysis.