Internal benchmarking of a human blood–brain barrier cell model for screening of nanoparticle uptake and transcytosis Nic Ragnaill, Michelle Brown, Meredith Ye, Dong Bramini, Mattia Callanan, Sean Lynch, Iseult Dawson, Kenneth A Nanoparticles Blood−brain barrier Transcytosis This research has been supported by EPA STRIVE Fellowship, 2008-EH-MS-5-S3 (M. Brown, M.N.R.), by the EU FP7 Small Collaborative project NeuroNano, NNP4-SL-2008-214547 (M.N.R., M. Bramini), and by an ESF EpitopeMap Research Networking Programme Exchange grant (M. Bramini). Part of this work was conducted under the framework of the INSPIRE Programme, funded by the Irish Government’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, Cycle 4, National Development Plan 2007–2013 (DY). The SFI SRC BioNanoInteract (07 SRC B1155) also supported part of the research reported here. Use of the UCD Electron Microscopy Core facility is also acknowledged. Transport of drugs across the blood–brain barrier, which protects the brain from harmful agents, is considered the holy grail of targeted delivery, due to the extreme effectiveness of this barrier at preventing passage of non-essential molecules through to the brain. This has caused severe limitations for therapeutics for many brain-associated diseases, such as HIV and neurodegenerative diseases. Nanomaterials, as a result of their small size (in the order of many protein–lipid clusters routinely transported by cells) and their large surface area (which acts as a scaffold for proteins thereby rendering nanoparticles as biological entities) offer great promise for neuro-therapeutics. However, in parallel with developing neuro-therapeutic applications based on nanotechnology, it is essential to ensure their safety and long-term consequences upon reaching the brain. One approach to determining safe application of nanomaterials in biology is to obtain a deep mechanistic understanding of the interactions between nanomaterials and living systems (bionanointeractions). To this end, we report here on the establishment and internal round robin validation of a human cell model of the blood–brain barrier for use as a tool for screening nanoparticles interactions, and assessing the critical nanoscale parameters that determine transcytosis. 2026-02-17T08:54:03Z 2026-02-17T08:54:03Z 2011-04-01 journal article Nic Ragnaill, M.; Brown, M.; Ye, D. [et al]. (2011). Internal benchmarking of a human blood–brain barrier cell model for screening of nanoparticle uptake and transcytosis. European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, vol. 77 (3), 360-367. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpb.2010.12.024 0939-6411 1873-3441 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111058 10.1016/j.ejpb.2010.12.024 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier