BtRAIN — Brain barriers training

Results in brief

Brain barriers training

In their function to protect the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system (CNS) from toxic compounds, the brain barriers also block delivery of drugs to the CNS. This hinders proper diagnosis and effective treatment of many neurological disorders as diverse as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis or brain tumors. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is established by endothelial cells lining the wall of small CNS blood vessels. The blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB) is established by epithelial cells of the choroid plexus, a structure protruding in the ventricles of the brain and producing the cerebrospinal fluid in which the entire brain is embedded and thus protected from physical impact. The high complexity of these brain barriers has severely hampered progress in the CNS therapeutic market. BtRAIN has developed technologies allowing to i) predit in laboratory culture models the passing of drugs across the BBB, ii) in laobratory culture models to study the BBB under physiological flow conditions as they exist in the blood stream, iii) determine, which genes drive maturation of the brain barriers during embryonic development, iv) understand how the brain barriers change during ageing, and v) define novel therapeutic target structures on the brain barriers for therapeutic barrier stabilization in neurological disorders. For the scientific community BtRAIN has established a significant number of novel datasets allowing to search for genes expressed in the brain barriers during development health and disease. The BBBHub allows resarchers to explore the genes expressed in the brain barriers during development, health and disease. For the lay community BtRAIN has developed BrainBarriers4You diseeminating the knowledge created in BtRAIN to the public in the spoken languages in Europe. BtRAIN has furthermore successfully educated a novel generation of young brain barriers researchers who have successfully pursued their research and created novel knowledge. BtRAIN ESRs have mastered to present and discuss their research data in international meetings and proven to be able to think out of the box and to bridge disciplinary interfaces. Their training across disciplines in addition to trainings in scientific communication, teachnology transfer and research management have shaped them to a highly skilled group of young researchers that created high visibility at the international brain barriers meetings. BtrAIN has thus succeeded to educate young researchers with a unique skillset who are able to work along the complete value creation chain in research and technological development.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The brain barriers function to protect the central nervous system (CNS) from neurotoxic compounds. By the same traits they unfortunately block delivery of drugs to the CNS thus hindering proper diagnosis and effective treatment of neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. The unusual complexity of the brain barriers has severely hampered progress in the market of CNS targeting therapeutics. BtRAIN bridges this gap by creating particular knowledge on vertebrate brain barrier signature genes and their specific roles in regulating brain barrier function in development, health, ageing and disease. Brain barrier signature genes will be identified by combining cross-species and cross-system brain barrier transcriptome analysis with dedicated bioinformatics. These data will be made available for brain barrier datamining in the userfriendly online platform BBBHub. Within BtRAIN, the side-by-side comparison of a unique and broad armamentarium of different vertebrate in vitro and in vivo brain barrier models will allow to develop and validate particular in vitro brain barrier models that are suited to reliably predict brain barrier function in vivo. Combined with an accompanying in depth analysis of the pathological alterations of the brain barriers during neurological disorders BtRAIN will create unique knowledge to overcome the unmet need for the development of diagnostic and therapeutic tools able to breach the brain barriers. In BtRAIN 12 academic, 6 non-academic partners and 1 European network will jointly train young researchers at unique interfaces of brain barrier research, bioinformatics, business development and science communication for an international research or entrepreneur career. To create this expert pool is the motivation for the involved partners as it will advance the Euopean capacity to bring innovative approaches to the untapped potential of the CNS therapeutic market.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

UNIVERSITAET BERN · BernCoordinatorSwitzerland
BRAINS FOR BRAIN FOUNDATION ONLUS · PadovaItaly
ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE · LausanneSwitzerland
F. HOFFMANN-LA ROCHE AG · BaselSwitzerland
GENXPRO GMBH · FrankfurtGermany
HUN-REN SZEGEDI BIOLOGIAI KUTATOKOZPONT · SzegedHungary
IFOM-ISTITUTO FONDAZIONE DI ONCOLOGIA MOLECOLARE ETS · MilanoItaly
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN · Frankfurt Am MainGermany
LAVISION BIOTEC GMBH · BielefeldGermany
MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV · MUNCHENGermany
NCARDIA BV · LeidenNetherlands
RUPRECHT-KARLS-UNIVERSITAET HEIDELBERG · HeidelbergGermany
STICHTING AMSTERDAM UMC · AmsterdamNetherlands
STICHTING VU · AmsterdamNetherlands
Scitec-media GmbH · WinterthurSwitzerland
THE OPEN UNIVERSITY · Milton KeynesUnited Kingdom
TP21 GMBH · BERLINGermany
UNIVERSITE D'ARTOIS · ArrasFrance
UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES · Bruxelles / BrusselBelgium
UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO · San DiegoUnited States

BtRAIN · Brain barriers training

Results in brief

Brain barriers training

Project objective

Participants

Links