In Vitro Human Blood-Brain Barrier Model for Drug Permeability Testing

Blood-brain barrier (BBB), although very important for protection of brain from major neurotoxins, negatively affects the treatment of central nervous system diseases by limiting the passage of neuropharmaceuticals from blood to the brain. Thus, researchers have to investigate the passage of the produced drug molecules through the BBB before they are introduced to the market. Although these experiments have been traditionally performed on experimental animals, drug permeability tests are now carried out mostly by in vitro BBB models due to ethical problems, differences between species, and expensive and troublesome in vivo test procedures. In this method, we explain how to model and characterize a realistic in vitro BBB model using human derived cells and perform a drug permeability test using this model.