Targeting the pathogenesis and boosting the therapeutic efficacy of Parkinson's disease by advanced nanoparticles

With the aging of global population, the early diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) have attracted considerable attention. Despite great advances achieved during the past decades, PD as the second largest neurodegenerative disease is still incurable. In the clinical practice, PD patients are mainly treated by drugs, and supplemented with deep brain stimulation or nerve nucleus destruction. The existing drugs can only relieve the symptoms of motor disorder, and cannot stop the progression of PD. Compared with small molecular drugs, nanoparticles exhibit multiple functions in the neuroprotection and neurorepair due to their tunable physical and chemical properties, easy modification and functionalization. Herein, we first briefly review the characteristics of nanoparticles crossing the blood–brain barrier, which is a primary challenge for the treatment of PD. Then, we summarize the pathologic mechanisms of PD and comprehensively discuss the novel PD therapy based on diverse nanoparticles, including alleviating oxidative stress, scavenging α-synuclein aggregates, chelating metal ions, delivering neurotrophic factors and genes, and transplanting stem cells. This review aims to highlight the great potential of advanced nanoparticles in the therapy of PD.