Researchers Succeed in ‘Growing’ a Working Blood-Brain Barrier

Researchers co-led by 2016 BBRF Young Investigator Ethan Lippmann, Ph.D., report they have succeeded in “building” vascular tissue that functions like the brain’s crucial protective membrane, called the blood-brain barrier. The model is grown from cells sampled from human vasculature that are induced to redevelop as a specialized cell type that is the basis of the blood-brain barrier. While researchers have experimented with rudimentary brain organoids, the new method for recreating structures that perform the role of the human blood-brain barrier, if incorporated into brain organoids, would bring science a step closer to creating “brains in a dish” that faithfully replicate both the structure and function of actual human brains, or portions of them.

Source: www.bbrfoundation.org