Development of a human in vitro model of the blood-brain barrier
2018
Rutgers University, Piscataway, USA(1)
University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, USA(2)
University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, USA(2)
A healthy blood-brain barrier is essential for proper homeostasis of the central nervous system. Thus, physiological deficiencies in it can have important roles in several brain pathologies. In the last years, there have been advances in developing in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier but there are still a lot of limitations associated with them. Here, a 3D printed transwell plate is used to create a bilayer co-culture of human iPSC-derived endothelial cells and astrocytes. Co-culture with astrocytes promoted tight junction protein expression and electrical resistance of the bilayer. Expression of tight junction proteins in this model suggested the formation of a cellular barrier, which was confirmed by transendothelial electrical resistance measurements, but also having permeability properties as shown by sodium fluorescein assay. Finally, researchers used a human glioblastoma cell line to study the barrier dynamics when using paclitaxel and bortezomib and human iPSC-derived neural cells to test how the model behaved when applying amyloid-beta. Overall, this extensive study proposes a new integrative human model for the blood-brain barrier that can be a powerful tool to increase translationality of in vitro studies.
Establishment of a human iPSC- and nanofiber-based microphysiological blood–brain barrier system
Peng Jiang(1), Bin Duan(2)
Added on: 08-18-2021
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.8b03962[2] https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/a8fd26ef-b113-47ab-92ba-fd2be449c7eb
