Intrathecal Magnetic Drug Targeting for Treatment of Central Nervous System Diseases VenugopalIndu 2017 Delivering drugs to the Central Nervous System is a formidable task due to barriers such as the blood brain barrier and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier, which hinder therapeutics from reaching the brain and spinal cord tissue. To overcome this challenge, a variety of nanoparticles with special properties for medical applications in the CNS have been developed. Despite recent advances, targeted delivery of drug-loaded nanoparticles in the central nervous system remains a challenge due to the inherent anatomical and physiological obstacles such as cerebrospinal fluid pulsations and difficulty in localization them to specific locations. This dissertation focuses on a novel approach called intrathecal magnetic drug targeting which uses magnetic nanoparticles, capable of being functionalized with different types of drugs, for localizing and concentrating therapeutics at specific locations in the central nervous system. In this dissertation, (i) superparamagnetic nanoparticles loaded with moieties such as quantum dots and tumor-drug molecules were synthesized, (ii) feasibility of the novel targeting technique was proven using in vitro and in vivo models, (iii) effect of magnetic fields on cellular uptake of tumor-drug loaded magnetic nanoparticles was studied and (iv) magnetic fields generated from permanent magnets were simulated to better optimize the in vitro and in vivo targeting of nanoparticles.