Effective treatment of brain disorders remains a tough task in medical science. Age-old brain disorders like Parkinson’s (PD) and Alzheimer’s (AD) are yet to be managed effectively in spite of fabulous scientific progress over the last decades. Presently available treatment strategies have been found insufficient to tackle the out bursting cases of AD and PD. Indeed, presence of blood-brain barrier (BBB) highly hijacks success of conventional drug therapy. In this regard, phyto bioactive components delivered through nanocarrier (NCs) systems hold ray of hope in improving treatment benefits in brain disorders. Several NCs including polymeric nanoparticles, nanoliposomes, micelles, dendrimers have now being heavily researched to effectively deliver the phyto active components to brain tissue. NCs owing to their structural and physiological uniqueness have now been evolved with great potential for the treatment of brain disorders. Functionalization of brain specific ligands on the surface of NCs further makes them target specific, which might significantly improve bioavailability or reduce the off-target adverse effects. This chapter primarily focuses on recent advancements in phyto component loaded NCs employed for the treatment of brain disorders. The chapter especially covers existing impediments of phyto component based NCs for Parkinson and Alzheimer’s disease.

Malignant brain tumor at its fourth stage (glioblastoma) is the most dangerous and an unsolved medical challenge till today. Present therapeutic strategies including chemo treatment, radiation along with surgery all together have not succeeded to control the progression of glioblastoma. Challenges in the early detection, unavailability of specific therapeutic strategy and severe cytotoxicity of available chemotherapeutics are the some of the prime causes of treatment failure. Especially presence of blood-brain barrier (BBB) highly limits pharmacological effect of conventional chemotherapy. In lieu of this, lipid based nanodrug carriers (LNCs) have now been evolved with great potential in improving the drug efficacy for the treatment of glioma. Further, LNCs engineered with specific targeting ligand might significantly reduce the dosage regimen, increase specificity, improve bioavailability and reduce off-target distribution. Such modified LNCs possess sufficient ability to cross BBB to deliver the loaded cargo(s) at target location inside the brain; thereby ensuring improved treatment outcome with less side effects than conventional treatment. This review primarily focuses on recent advancements in various engineered LNCs for the treatment of brain cancer. Also, the existing impediments for nanomedicines associated with their effective large scale synthesis or sufficient clinical application have also been highlighted.