Pro-inflammatory cytokines contribute to hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. Blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction represents an important component of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in the fetus. Hypoxic-ischemic injury could accentuate systemic cytokine transfer across the fetal BBB. There has been considerable conjecture suggesting that systemic cytokines could cross the BBB during the perinatal p...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) poses a significant impediment for the delivery of therapeutic drugs into the brain. This is particularly problematic for the treatment of malignant gliomas which are characterized by diffuse infiltration of tumor cells into normal brain where they are protected by a patent BBB. Selective disruption of the BBB, followed by administration of anti-cancer agents, repr...

Exposure to blast overpressure (BOP) activates a cascade of pathological processes including changes in intracranial pressure (ICP) and blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability resulting in traumatic brain injury (TBI). In this study the effect of single and multiple exposures at two intensities of BOP on changes in ICP and BBB permeability in Sprague-Dawley rats was evaluated. Animals were expos...

Disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) results in cerebral edema formation, which is a major cause for high mortality after traumatic brain injury (TBI). As anesthetic care is mandatory in patients suffering from severe TBI it may be important to elucidate the effect of different anesthetics on cerebral edema formation. Tight junction proteins (TJ) such as zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) and cla...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) maintains the individuality of brain fluid, while allowing it to selectively import nutrients and process toxic products. Its major constituent is a single layer of continuous, nonfenestrated endothelium lining the microvessels, whose unique features account in large part for the integrity of the barrier. The endothelial cell monolayer is the major determinant, but...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the signature injury of modern military conflicts due to the prevalence of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, the pathobiology of blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI) and its effects on the blood-brain barrier (BBB) – a structure essential for maintaining brain homeostasis – remain poorly understood. This work utilized a helium-driven shock tube...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a term used to describe the unique properties of central nervous system (CNS) blood vessels. One important BBB property is the formation of a paracellular barrier made by tight junctions (TJs) between CNS endothelial cells (ECs). Here, we show that Lipolysis-stimulated lipoprotein receptor (LSR), a component of paracellular junctions at points in which three cel...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is critical to the health of the central nervous system (CNS). The possibility that 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) participates in the alteration of the BBB has been previously demonstrated. Tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) is a unique genetic enzyme isoform that catalyzes the rate-limiting step in the biosynthesis of 5-HT in the CNS; however, its role in the permeabili...

Blood brain barrier (BBB) breakdown is not only a consequence of but also contributes to many neurological disorders, including stroke and Alzheimer's disease. How the basement membrane (BM) contributes to the normal functioning of the BBB remains elusive. Here we use conditional knockout mice and an acute adenovirus-mediated knockdown model to show that lack of astrocytic laminin, a brain-spec...

Delivery of diagnostic or therapeutic agents across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) remains a major challenge of brain disease treatment. Magnetic nanoparticles are actively being developed as drug carriers due to magnetic targeting and subsequently reduced off-target effects. In this paper, we developed a magnetic SiO2@Fe3O4 nanoparticle-based carrier bound to cell-penetrating peptide Tat (SiO2@...