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Diffusion Rates Across the Blood-Brain Barrier

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The blood-brain barrier is a semipermeable membrane that separates the brain from the capillaries that pass through it. A relevant question in medical technology is the rate at which drugs are able to pass through this barrier, which subsequently informs studies in pharmacology and physiology. The Demonstration illustrates a series of structural variables applied to the cells in a simulated human brain. The comparative rates of diffusion in a variety of biologically active compounds were found by applying an integrated form of Fick's Law, given by

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where is the concentration of the compound in the brain, is the concentration of the compound in the capillaries, is the diffusion coefficient, is the blood-brain barrier surface area, is the thickness and is the volume of the brain.

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Contributed by: Maria Zhang and Amer Ghali (April 2019)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

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References

[1] L. Cucullo, M. Hossain, E. Rapp, T. Manders, N. Marchi and D. Janigro, "Development of a Humanized In Vitro Blood-Brain Barrier Model to Screen for Brain Penetration of Antiepileptic Drugs," Epilepsia, 48(3), 2007 pp. 505–516.

[2] M. Hammarlund-Udenaes, M. Fridén, S. Syvänen and A Gupta, "On the Rate and Extent of Drug Delivery to the Brain," Pharmaceutical Research, 25(8), 2008 pp. 1737–1750.

[3] V. A. Levin, "Relationship of Octanol/Water Partition Coefficient and Molecular Weight to Rat Brain Capillary Permeability," Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 23(6), 1980 pp. 682–684.

[4] E. Lüders, H. Steinmetz and L. Jäncke, "Brain Size and Grey Matter Volume in the Healthy Human Brain," NeuroReport, 13(17), 2002 pp. 2371–2374.

[5] H. van de Waterbeemd, G. Camenisch, G. Folkers, J. R. Chretien and O. A. Raevsky, "Estimation of Blood-Brain Barrier Crossing of Drugs Using Molecular Size and Shape, and H-Bonding Descriptors," Journal of Drug Targeting, 6(2), 1998 pp. 151–165.

[6] A. D. Wong, M. Ye, A. F. Levy, J. D. Rothstein, D. E. Bergles and P. Searson, "The Blood-Brain Barrier: An Engineering Perspective" Frontiers in Neuroengineering, 6(7), 2013.

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