Feasibility Study of Nose-to-Brain Delivery of Galantamine for Alzheimer’s Disease: Enhancing Olfactory-Region Deposition to Improve Therapeutic Efficacy

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the seventh leading cause of death worldwide, posing a substantial global health burden. Although galantamine (GNT) is a first-line clinical drug for AD treatment, its therapeutic efficacy is constrained by inefficient brain delivery across the blood–brain barrier (BBB). Nose-to-brain delivery represents a promising route to bypass the BBB. However, its efficiency remains limited by insufficient drug deposition in the anatomically restricted olfactory region. In this study, we developed a galantamine nasal spray (GNT-NS) with enhanced olfactory region deposition and evaluated its feasibility for nose-to-brain delivery in AD treatment. Methods: We optimized the formulation by systematically investigating the cascade relationship among formulation physicochemical properties, spray performance, and olfactory region deposition. Nasal deposition distribution was quantitatively evaluated using a physiologically realistic 3D-printed human nasal cavity model reconstructed from clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Further, the in vivo biodistribution and therapeutic efficacy of GNT-NS were evaluated in AD rats. Results: The optimized formulation P3 achieved an olfactory region fraction of 23.85%, markedly exceeding that of the unoptimized formulation P0. Subsequent in vivo biodistribution studies showed that P3 produced higher brain drug exposure than both intranasally administered P0 and the commercial oral formulation. Further pharmacodynamic studies demonstrated that GNT-NS significantly improved cognitive and behavioral deficits in AD rats, exhibiting superior therapeutic efficacy over commercially available oral galantamine tablets. Conclusions: Collectively, this study proposes a cascade regulation strategy linking formulation physicochemical properties, spray performance, and olfactory region deposition and demonstrates that optimizing nasal spray properties can enhance olfactory deposition, increase brain exposure and improve therapeutic efficacy. These findings provide a useful reference for the design of nose-to-brain delivery formulations for AD and other central nervous system diseases.