Blood-Brain Barrier

It was very interesting to me to learn about the blood-brain barrier. The blood brain barrier is made up of certain cells that form walls on the brain’s blood vessels. This barrier is very important because it is so tightly closed to prevent any unwanted chemicals or viruses from entering the brain. It only allows molecules that are essential for the brain such as water, oxygen, glucose, amino acids, etc, making it almost impossible for anything else to pass. If we think about it, we might say this is a very good thing, but not quite. Although we are protected from many harmful things to our brain, the blood brain barrier prevents many medications to treat life-threatening diseases from reaching the brain. Researchers have for years tried to find a way to get past the blood brain barrier to cure such diseases as brain cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. "The bottom line is, if you can get drugs into the brain, you can cure brain cancer". Researchers have tried different things to get certain drugs in the brain to cure these diseases, such as modifying drugs and using adenosine receptors and haven’t been very successful. As we can see, it is very important to have such a blood brain barrier because it fights to keep us healthy and free of unwanted chemicals but at the same time it is too restricted towards chemicals that it prevents important medicines from entering the brain to cure life-threatening diseases. In my point in life right now, I am glad we have such a barrier because I am healthy due to it but I also think of the people who have brain cancer or Alzheimer’s and would really like further research to finally allow the medicines needed to cure these diseases to go past the blood brain barrier.

Here is a video to explain a little about the blood brain barrier