Overcoming the brain's fortress-like barrier
The brain is protected by the near-impermeable blood brain barrier, a fortress which protects the brain but which also prevents the treatment of brain diseases, including brain tumours. Dr Zaynah Maherally and team at the University of Portsmouth have developed a model that mimics the blood brain barrier, which could pave the way for better, more efficient and reliable tests of drugs to treat brain diseases. ,p>The model, the result of slow painstaking research started in 2007, is published in the FASEB Journal . Dr Maherally said: "The blood brain barrier is strikingly complex and notoriously difficult for scientists to breach. Its role, to protect the brain, makes it difficult for most drugs to make their way into the brain to treat brain tumours. "It is a dynamic structural, physiological and biochemical fortification that, in essence, protects the brain by providing multiple layers of armour, stopping molecules from entering the brain. It's highly select...