Application and advances of biomimetic membrane materials in central nervous system disorders

Central nervous system (CNS) diseases encompass spinal cord injuries, brain tumors, neurodegenerative diseases, and ischemic strokes. Recently, there has been a growing global recognition of CNS disorders as a leading cause of disability and death in humans and the second most common cause of death worldwide. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) presents a challenge for effective drug delivery in CNS disorders, as conventional drugs often have limited penetration into the brain. Advances in biomimetic membrane nanomaterials technology have shown promise in enhancing drug delivery for various CNS disorders, leveraging properties such as natural biological surfaces, high biocompatibility and biosafety. Biomimetic membrane materials are composed of different kinds of cell membranes wrapped around drug-containing nanomaterials, or extracellular vesicles. Because the biomimetic membrane has high biocompatibility and biosafety, it can not only camouflage into the body’s intrinsic cells to avoid being captured by the immune system, thus prolonging the time in the blood circulation , but also has a variety of biological functions of cell membranes, such as low toxicity, targeting, penetration, etc., which may greatly improve the efficiency and concentration of the drug delivery into the brain.

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  Biomimetic membrane materials can give NPs for drug delivery the privilege of “not being eaten” in vivo and can easily pass through the BBB.
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  Genetic engineering or chemical modification of biomimetic membranes enhances the targeting, stealth, and drug-carrying capacity of biomimetic membrane materials and can be precisely delivered to the site of injury of CNS disorders, which provides new and effective therapeutic strategy options.
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  Different biomimetic membranes can be endowed with different biological functions. Therefore, there are many factors that affect the selection of biomimetic membrane, such as cell subtype, cell pathophysiology, stem cell transplantation for reference, natural homing of cells, tumor cell homology recognition, etc., and even the pathogenesis of disease can be the key to choose which type of biomimetic membrane.