Delivery of Antipsychotics with Nanoparticles

Psychosis remains one of the most challenging health problems for society, affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Although current antipsychotics can alleviate the symptoms of psychosis, they are still far away from being perfect, often causing significant and even fatal side effects such as involuntary movement disorders and metabolic syndrome. With the lack of precise knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of psychosis, a rational approach to improve the efficiency of current antipsychotics is by nanoparticle-based administration. Nanoparticles with the size of 1-500 nm can be used in drug formulations to pass through many biological barriers including the blood-brain barrier, which makes them excellent candidates for the delivery of antipsychotics. Besides that, nanoparticles loaded with antipsychotics can solve the common aqueous solubility issues for most brain targeting drugs, and enable a slow-release profile for the encapsulated drugs. This research overview provides a brief summary and discussion of the progress and development in the delivery of antipsychotics with nanoparticle formulations over the past five years (2011-2016). Drug Dev Res 77 : 393-399, 2016. (c) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.