Barrier gateways

With induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells making inroads into more and more areas of biology, two groups have now used the technology to generate models of the blood-brain barrier and pinpoint new molecular mechanisms contributing to Huntington’s disease and the rare CNS disorder Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome.

In a Cell Reports study in May, a group from University of California Irvine showed induced brain microvascular endothelial cells (iBMECs) derived from HD patients were more permeable than iBMECs from healthy volunteers because shifts in gene regulation caused excess angiogenesis while at the same time delaying barrier maturation, or “barriergenesis” (see “Distillery”)...