scholarly journals 3D brain angiogenesis model to reconstitute maturation of functional human blood-brain barrier in vitro

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Somin Lee ◽  
Minhwan Chung ◽  
Noo Li Jeon

0.AbstractHuman central nervous system (CNS) vasculature in brain expresses a distinctive barrier phenotype, the blood–brain barrier (BBB), which protects the brain against harmful pathogens. Since the BBB contributes to low success rate in CNS pharmacotherapy by restricting drug transportation, the development of an in vitro human BBB model has been in demand. Previous models were unable to fully represent the complex threedimensional (3D) anatomical structure or specific barrier phenotypes of the matured BBB. In this study, we present a physiological 3D microfluidic model of the human BBB that mimics its developmental process including CNS angiogenesis and subsequent maturation in concert with perivascular cells. We used microfluidic hydrogel patterning to precisely and sequentially load perivascular cells into the model, investigate the role of each cell type on BBB phenotypes. We confirmed the necessity of the tri-culture system (brain endothelium with pericytes and astrocytes) to attain the characteristic BBB vascular morphology such as minimized diameter and maximized junction expression. In addition, endothelial-perivascular cell interaction was also critical in reconstituting p-glycoprotein (p-gp), efflux transporter in our model that works as metabolic barrier of BBB and blocks drug to enter CNS. The 3D hydrogel matrix was tuned with hyaluronic acid (HA) to optimize the interaction between endothelial cells and astrocytes. Our in vitro BBB system mimics CNS angiogenesis and characteristic features of BBB. We expect the model will contribute to deeper understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and cost-efficient development of effective CNS medications.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Pfau ◽  
Urs H. Langen ◽  
Theodore M. Fisher ◽  
Indumathi Prakash ◽  
Faheem Nagpurwala ◽  
...  

SUMMARYThe blood-brain barrier (BBB) is critical for protecting the brain and maintaining neuronal homeostasis. Although the BBB is a unique feature of the central nervous system (CNS) vasculature, not all brain regions have the same degree of impermeability. Differences in BBB permeability are important for controlling the local extracellular environment of specific brain regions to regulate the function and plasticity of particular neural circuits. However, how BBB heterogeneity occurs is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate how regional specialization of the BBB is achieved. With unbiased cell profiling in small, defined brain regions, we compare the median eminence, which has a naturally leaky BBB, with the cortex, which has an impermeable BBB. We identify hundreds of molecular differences in endothelial cells (ECs) and demonstrate the existence of differences in perivascular astrocytes and pericytes in these regions, finding 3 previously unknown subtypes of astrocytes and several key differences in pericytes. By serial electron microscopy reconstruction and a novel, aqueous-based tissue clearing imaging method, we further reveal previously unknown anatomical specializations of these perivascular cells and their unique physical interactions with neighboring ECs. Finally, we identify ligand-receptor pairs between ECs and perivascular cells that may regulate regional BBB integrity in ECs. Using a bioinformatic approach we identified 26 and 26 ligand-receptor pairs underlying EC-pericyte and EC-astrocyte interactions, respectively. Our results demonstrate that differences in ECs, together with region-specific physical and molecular interactions with local perivascular cells, contribute to BBB functional heterogeneity. These regional cell inventories serve as a platform for further investigation of the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of the BBB in other brain regions. Identification of local BBB specializations provides insight into the function of different brain regions and will permit the development of region-specific drug delivery in the CNS.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 2170051
Author(s):  
Christina L. Schofield ◽  
Aleixandre Rodrigo-Navarro ◽  
Matthew J. Dalby ◽  
Tom Van Agtmael ◽  
Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez

Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 892
Author(s):  
Elisa L. J. Moya ◽  
Elodie Vandenhaute ◽  
Eleonora Rizzi ◽  
Marie-Christine Boucau ◽  
Johan Hachani ◽  
...  

Central nervous system (CNS) diseases are one of the top causes of death worldwide. As there is a difficulty of drug penetration into the brain due to the blood–brain barrier (BBB), many CNS drugs treatments fail in clinical trials. Hence, there is a need to develop effective CNS drugs following strategies for delivery to the brain by better selecting them as early as possible during the drug discovery process. The use of in vitro BBB models has proved useful to evaluate the impact of drugs/compounds toxicity, BBB permeation rates and molecular transport mechanisms within the brain cells in academic research and early-stage drug discovery. However, these studies that require biological material (animal brain or human cells) are time-consuming and involve costly amounts of materials and plastic wastes due to the format of the models. Hence, to adapt to the high yields needed in early-stage drug discoveries for compound screenings, a patented well-established human in vitro BBB model was miniaturized and automated into a 96-well format. This replicate met all the BBB model reliability criteria to get predictive results, allowing a significant reduction in biological materials, waste and a higher screening capacity for being extensively used during early-stage drug discovery studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 102377
Author(s):  
Laís Ribovski ◽  
Edwin de Jong ◽  
Olga Mergel ◽  
Guangyue Zu ◽  
Damla Keskin ◽  
...  

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