Topic: trans-endothelial electrical resistance

Physiologically relevant human in vitro models of the BBB are essential to improve our understanding of its function in health and disease, identify novel drug targets, and assess potential new therapies. We present a BBB-on-a-chip model comprising human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMECs) cultured in a microfluidic platform that allows parallel culture of 40 chips. In each chip, a perfused HBMEC vessel was grown against an extracellular matrix gel in a membrane-free manner. BBBs-on-chips were exposed to varying concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor alph

Blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption and the consequent alteration of solute and ion transport play a pivotal role in the onset and progression of many neurological diseases, including epilepsy. Among the players that have been shown to modulate BBB function, our group recently demonstrated that Kv7 channels, a family of voltage-gated potassium channels, are critical modulators of barrier permeability, both in physiological conditions and experimental models of seizures. Accumulating evidence suggest that the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is altered during epilepsy and affects BBB permeabilit