Role of inflammation on Blood Brain Barrier Permeability on the 2nd Day of IBRO at PU

Chandigarh November 5, 2019

The Second day of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) -Asia Pacific Regional Committee (APRC) supported school on the theme ‘Blood-Brain-Barrier: From Basic Physiology to Neurological Disorders started with a Skype lecture from Dr Ajeet Kaushik, Florida Polytechnic University, U.S.A. He highlighted his work on the use of personalized nanotherapy to treat neurological disorders. He also discussed his work on MENS (Magneto Electric
Nanoparticles), which can pass through the blood brain barrier (BBB) and can be a potential source of future therapeutics.

Prof. Prakash Babu, Dean, School of Medical Sciences, University of Hyderabad, discussed that despite several advancements in the treatment people affected with malaria is growing. The major challenge is posed by the severe form of malaria, called Cerebral Malaria (CM) and drug resistance. Unresolved issue of the CM is cognitive impairment especially with the children and young adults who suffered from CM. In this connection his lab has recently reported the
association of BBB and inflammation in CM as well as in ischemic stroke.

The session was followed by Dr. Girdhari Lal, National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune.  He highlighted how current lifestyle and exposure to different types of stressors like socio-economic stress, substance abuse etc can lead to several chronic diseases.  How in these chronic diseases, immune cells and brain cells communicate with each other and participate in neuroinflammation is being investigated at NCCS, Pune. The centre also uses cutting edge tools and technology to investigate neurological disorders and provide a new platform to benefit the patient.

Dr. Deepak Sharma, CSIR-IMTech, Chandigarh discussed about various model organisms like worms, mice, etc, to study Parkinson’s disease. He also emphasized the importance of simulating similar environment for the model studies to reflect the conditions experienced by human patients. Dr. Deepak also showed various behavior studies performed in
these models. Concluding, he mentioned the importance of our eating habits as there is a saying that root of every disease starts from the gut.

The extensive talk was then followed by the laboratory session where participants were given hands on training on experiments used for studying the structure of BBB. Lastly, today’s session to the young scientists participating in the IBRO workshop elucidated importance of structural and functional integrity of BBB.

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