0000000000368422
AUTHOR
Hagen Von Briesen
Isolation and molecular characterization of brain microvascular endothelial cells from human brain tumors.
Brain tumor formation and growth is accompanied by the proliferation and infiltration of blood capillaries. The phenotypes of endothelial cells that make up capillaries are known to differ not only in the tissues in which endothelial cells are located but also as a result of the microenvironment to which they are exposed. For this reason, primary cultures of brain endothelial cells were isolated from human brain tumors removed by surgery and compared with cells from normal tissue. The primary confluent monolayers that grew out of isolated capillary fragments consisted of closely associated, elongated, fusiform-shaped cells. But brain tumor-derived endothelial cells in culture exhibited sign…
Uptake mechanism of ApoE-modified nanoparticles on brain capillary endothelial cells as a blood-brain barrier model.
Background The blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents an insurmountable obstacle for most drugs thus obstructing an effective treatment of many brain diseases. One solution for overcoming this barrier is a transport by binding of these drugs to surface-modified nanoparticles. Especially apolipoprotein E (ApoE) appears to play a major role in the nanoparticle-mediated drug transport across the BBB. However, at present the underlying mechanism is incompletely understood. Methodology/Principal Findings In this study, the uptake of the ApoE-modified nanoparticles into the brain capillary endothelial cells was investigated to differentiate between active and passive uptake mechanism by flow cytome…