Patent ID: 8293495

Claim:
A method of analyzing the blood-brain barrier permeability characteristics of a model compound comprising the steps of: a) creating a multicellular blood-brain barrier model by culturing brain microvascular endothelial cells upon a permeable support in the presence of pre-differentiated multipotent neural progenitor cells wherein the endothelial cells form a monolayer wherein the cells are confluent and express and initial transendothelial electrical resistance (TEER) of 20-50 Ohm×cm 2 before exposure to the neural cells, and wherein the pre-differentiated multipotent neural progenitor cells further differentiate into mixtures of astrocytes, neurons and oligodendrocytes, wherein the TEER is greater than 100 Ohm×cm 2 after exposure to the differentiated neural cells and wherein the model is then capable of a TEER of greater than 100 Ohm×cm 2 for a period of at least 72 hours; b) exposing a model compound to the blood-brain barrier model resulting from step (a), and c) measuring the permeability of the barrier model to the compound.