Statement of the Problem
Central nervous system (CNS) is a closely intricate control system of human body, regulating almost all the physiological mechanism directly or indirectly. Any imbalance or damage in this neural architecture leads to cascade of neural dysfunction. Fixing them has been a challenging task due to different inevitable physiological limitations like circulation barriers, drug permeability and their degradation. These factors limit the drug distribution towards the affected location in brain. The AD treatments used currently are facing constraints due to their pharmaceutical limitations and intend to provide the symptomatic relief alongwith potential side effects. So, new alternatives for the treatment of AD are highly desired and hence, natural products have been considered as more viable therapeutic options, owing to their wide spectrum of medicinal properties. The efficient therapeutic impact of Ginkgo biloba (GB) and its standardized extract (EGB761) is already known for improving the pathological landmarks in AD but it has shown pharmaceutical limitations like - fast degradability, lower bio-availability and delay in reaching the site of action. To address many of such issues, designed the study to develop the formulation for the same to be delivered through intranasal route as enables the delivery of drug compounds directly in to the targeted site of action (brain).
Findings: The present study results exhibited the nanometric size range (80 – 260nm) of the optimized standard extract (EGB761) microemulsion system (GBME) with desired Rheological parameters. GBME was also evaluated for its neuroprotective efficiency through in vitro and in vivo experimental models and there data indicated comparatively higher neuroprotective efficiency of GBME in comparison to the extract (EGB761) and positive standard (Reminyl) in Alzheimer’s induced mice model (in vivo) and neuronal cell lines. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that the developed formulation (GBME) has potential therapeutic effects on improving the pathological state of AD, and might be taken further as a promising candidate for clinical research to evaluate its efficacy in humans.