Nanomedicines and stroke: Toward translational research

Since their introduction in the late 60′, nanotechnologies applied to medicine, called nanomedicines, are believed to have the potential to be the mankind's first “giant step” toward treatment of severe diseases. Among others, they could provide an original solution for the treatment of brain impairments, such as stroke, allowing developing and commercializing more efficient therapeutic solutions. However, despite clear improvement in pharmacokinetic properties and reductions of adverse side effects when using nanomedicines, only modest therapeutic benefits were achieved in humans. This may be due to specific issues in the nanoformulation development process and evaluation, which hampered their translation from the bench to the bedside. In this review, we aim to tackle some of the key challenges that have to be taken into account when developing and evaluating a new nanomedicines, with a special emphasis on the development of nanomedicines for the treatment of stroke.

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