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The Journal of Neuroscience, March 18, 2009, 29(11):3538-3550; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5564-08.2009

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Cellular/Molecular
Evolutionary Conservation of Vertebrate Blood–Brain Barrier Chemoprotective Mechanisms in Drosophila

Fahima Mayer,^1 * Nasima Mayer,^1 * Leslie Chinn,² Robert L. Pinsonneault,¹ Deanna Kroetz,² and Roland J. Bainton¹

¹Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, San Francisco General Hospital, and ²Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143

Correspondence should be addressed to Roland J. Bainton, Box 2200, Mission Bay/Genetech Hall S312C, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158-2517. Email: baintonr{at}anesthesia.ucsf.edu

Pharmacologic remedy of many brain diseases is difficult because of the powerful drug exclusion properties of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). Chemical isolation of the vertebrate brain is achieved through the highly integrated, anatomically compact and functionally overlapping chemical isolation processes of the BBB. These include functions that need to be coordinated between tight diffusion junctions and unidirectionally acting xenobiotic transporters. Understanding of many of these processes has been hampered, because they are not well mimicked by ex vivo models of the BBB and have been experimentally difficult and expensive to disentangle in intact rodent models. Here we show that the Drosophila melanogaster (Dm) humoral/CNS barrier conserves the xenobiotic exclusion properties found in the vertebrate vascular endothelium. We characterize a fly ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter, Mdr65, that functions similarly to mammalian xenobiotic BBB transporters and show that varying its levels solely in the Dm BBB changes the inherent sensitivity of the barrier to cytotoxic pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, we demonstrate orthologous function between Mdr65 and vertebrate ABC transporters by rescuing chemical protection of the Dm brain with human MDR1/Pgp. These data indicate that the ancient origins of CNS chemoprotection extend to both conserved molecular means and functionally analogous anatomic spaces that together promote CNS selective drug partition. Thus, Dm presents an experimentally tractable system for analyzing physiological properties of the BBB in an intact organism.

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Received Nov. 19, 2008; revised Jan. 27, 2009; accepted Feb. 5, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Roland J. Bainton, Box 2200, Mission Bay/Genetech Hall S312C, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158-2517. Email: baintonr{at}anesthesia.ucsf.edu

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BBB in toxicology

Heikki Savolainen

J. Neurosci. Online, 19 Mar 2009 [Full text]

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