Why use drug nanoparticles, why not design better medicines?
This use of cyanoacrylates is also of particular interest as it can be used to let drugs go through the blood-brain barrier [14]. This is very important because the failings of a lot of medicines is their inability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and enter their site of action. The mechanism for this is currently not known; a good guess is that the particles are able to be taken up by the cells that line the brain capillaries and can get past the blood-brain barrier. This is important for treating ilnesses such as brain cancer although there is a debate over whether to use this method or to create drugs designed to cross the blood-brain barrier [15].
