Can the blood-brain barrier protect the brain from nanos?

Read the latest Nanopinion guest column from Dr. Eugenia Valsami-Jones on how nanomaterials may bypass the blood-brain-barrier and gain access to the brain. The knowledge acquired can help make the use of nanomaterials safer by ensuring that properties that facilitate crossing of the BBB are designed out of products that could come to direct contact with our bodies.

‘When nanoparticles we inhale, ingest, or come to contact through our skin work their way to our blood stream, they acquire the potential to reach and then cross the BBB. To understand how this might happen, we set out to systematically explore how different nanoparticle properties, such as composition, size, shape and propensity to dissolve, play a role in their potential to be transported across such a tight barrier.’