Various in Vitro Models to Assess Drug Permeability Across the Blood Brain Barrier

M. Pichandy¹, S. kannaiyan¹*, V.Mandhava¹, B.Sindhu, P. K. Lakshmi¹, Umadevi¹, Vaijayanthi¹ and A. Mithra²

¹Department of pharmaceutics, Vels College of pharmacy, Chennai - 600 117 India.

²Department of pharmaceutics, C.L.Baid Mehta College of pharmacy, Thorappakkam, Chennai - 600 096 India.

ABSTRACT: Delivery of drugs to the brain is still a major challenge. Much research has focused on the development of novel therapeutic agents to target various central nervous system disorders, however less attention has been given to determine the potential of such agents to permeate the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). Inorder to assess the potential for novel compounds to permeate the BBB, various invitro, invivo and insilico methods may be employed. Although invitro models (such as primary cell culture and immortalized cell lines) are useful as a screening method and can appropriately rank compounds inorder of BBB permeability, they often correlate poorly to invivo brain uptake due to down regulation of some BBB specific transporters. This paper reviews current invitro models used for assessing BBB permeability.

KEYWORDS: Blood brain barrier;  Invitro Models; Tissue culture

[ HTML Full Text]