Revolutionizing Neurodegenerative Disease Research: Microfluidic Models Mimic the Blood-Brain Barrier

The blood-brain barrier (BBB), a crucial gatekeeper regulating the exchange of substances between blood and the brain, plays a pivotal role in maintaining brain homeostasis and protecting neural tissues from harmful substances. Neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by progressive neuronal loss and functional decline, pose a significant challenge to modern medicine. Dysfunctional BBB integrity can exacerbate or contribute to the onset and progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Recognizing the contributing factors is critical to understanding the disease mechanism, and developing a model that is essential for combating these debilitating disorders. Microfluidic technology has made significant advances in therapy by creating BBB models it has emerged as a transformative tool for modeling the BBB in vitro, offering a more controlled and versatile platform compared to traditional in vivo and in vitro methods. Microfluidic models can effectively mimic various aspects of the BBB's physiological environment, including fluid flow conditions, shear stress, cell-cell interactions, and extracellular matrix composition. This remarkable capability allows researchers to investigate the effects of various factors on BBB permeability, drug transport, and cellular signaling, leading to profound insights into the underlying mechanisms of BBB dysfunction and its contribution to neurodegeneration. These models have become an alternative to previous models and have theirown set of advantages and disadvantages. Although considerable progress has been made in modeling the blood-brain barrier, accurate modeling of the reference and unit has not yet been achieved. This article discussed the development of microfluidic modeling of the blood-brain barrier in the context of neurodegenerative diseases using databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Nature. The focus is on both treatment and modeling in this field.

کلیدواژه ها:

Microfluid ، Neurodegenerative disease ، BBB ، Blood-Brain Barrier