As a leading provider of advanced cell culture assays that works with all of the top twenty pharmaceutical companies, Visikol is continually striving to provide its clients with in vitro systems that better predict in vivo outcomes. Better recapitulating the in vivo system within an inexpensive and high throughput in vitro model means fewer animals are used in testing and the overall drug discovery pipeline is less time consuming and less expensive, as poorly performing drugs are screened out of the process earlier. Today, the company is excited to announce that it has launched a blood brain barrier (BBB) assay for assessing the penetration of compounds across the BBB as well as the effect of compounds on the permeability of the BBB itself.
The BBB behaves as a highly selective semipermeable membrane separating circulating blood from the central nervous system while allowing the passage of glucose, water, and amino acids into the cerebrospinal fluid. The BBB protects brain nervous tissue from the fluctuation of plasma composition, from pathogenic agents, and maintains homeostasis of the brain parenchyma by restricting non-specific flux of ions, peptides, proteins and cells into and out the brain. The BBB is permeable to hydrophobic molecules and utilizes active transport to move ions, glucose and other critical molecules across the membrane. When functioning properly, the BBB is a complex barrier that must be overcome when trying to deliver therapeutics to the brain. Due to the challenges with therapeutics crossing the blood brain barrier, researchers need access to tools that can replicate this process in vitro.
According to Visikol CSO, Dr. Tom Villani, “The poor penetration of compounds across this barrier is responsible for the attrition of 95% of therapeutics that target regions of the brain.” By allowing for compound penetration across the BBB to be investigated in vitro, experimental data can be generated earlier in the development process at a higher throughput and lower cost when compared with animal studies. This model can be used for drug BBB permeability assays, research on BBB physiology, cell-cell interactions, and many other analyses. When combined with the Visikol portfolio of imaging and image analysis tools as well as chemical analysis approaches, Visikol is able to provide a truly differentiated assay for assessing the BBB.
The Visikol BBB assay leverages the Fujifilm iCell platform and incorporates the iCell Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells, iCell Pericytes along with iCell Astrocytes in a transwell based model system. The model has demonstrated a high degree of BBB functionality and a high degree of correlation to expected in vivo results with compounds with known in vivo outcomes. If you are interested in working with Visikol and utilizing this BBB assay, please reach out to our team today to discuss further. Visikol offers end-to-end solutions leveraging this assay from compound to report.
For further information, please contact:
Michael Johnson, CEO, Visikol
Email: Michael.johnson@visikol.com