Drug delivery to brain tumours: challenges and progress

Nearly 12.5 million new cancer cases are diagnosed worldwide each year. Although new treatments have been developed, most new anticancer drugs that are effective outside the brain have failed in clinical trials against brain tumours, in part due to poor penetration across the blood–brain barrier and the blood–brain tumour barrier. This review will discuss the challenges of drug delivery across the blood–brain barrier/blood–brain tumour barrier to cancer cells, as well as progress made so far. This will include a biochemical modulation strategy that transiently opens the barrier to increase anticancer drug delivery selectively to brain tumours. It will also briefly discuss a quantitative non-invasive method to measure permeability changes and tumour response to treatment in the human brain.