High and low permeability of human pluripotent stem cell-derived Blood Brain barrier models depend on epithelial or endothelial features

The search for reliable human blood-brain barrier (BBB) models represents a challenge for the development/testing of strategies aiming to enhance brain delivery of drugs. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have raised hopes in the development of predictive BBB models. Differentiating strategies are thus required to generate endothelial cells (ECs), a major component of the BBB. Several hiPSC-based protocols have reported the generation of in vitro models with significant differences in barrier properties. We studied in depth the properties of iPSCs byproducts from two protocols that have been established to yield these in vitro barrier models. Our analysis/study reveals that iPSCs endowed with EC features yield high permeability models, while the cells that exhibit outstanding barrier properties show principally epithelial cell-like (EpC) features. Our study demonstrates that hiPSC-based BBB models need extensive characterization beforehand and that a reliable human BBB model is still needed.