Crossing Blood-Brain Barrier with Carbon Quantum Dots

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a semi-permeable structure, which is essential for the protection of the central nervous system (CNS). BBB selectively allows the passage of the necessary small molecules/nutrients from the blood to the brain while blocking pathogens or toxins. However, BBB becomes a major obstacle during disease since it significantly hinders the drug delivery to the CNS. Therefore, developing a drug delivery system to cross BBB is highly desired. Recently, nanoparticles (NPs) have become emergent tools to assist drugs to cross BBB. Since most NPs cannot cross BBB by themselves, the nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery heavily depends on conjugating the NPs to the ligands such as transferrin to pass through the BBB via receptor-mediated endocytosis. Here, we designed Carbon quantum dots (CDs) that can cross BBB without the need of a ligand. We hypothesized that the saccharide-based CDs will have an amphiphilic structure with surface groups that resemble the saccharide precursor. Therefore,...