Development of brain therapeutics is significantly hampered by the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Classical transwell models are able to recapitulate many important aspects of drug transport across the BBB, but are not completely predictive of in vivo brain uptake. Species differences further complicate translation of experimental therapeutics from the benchtop to the clinic. Human BBB models offer some solutions to this problem. By increasing device complexity in terms of multicellularity, flow, and physical architecture, physiological models of the BBB have been developed that can more faithfully model different aspects of BBB transport and homeostasis . Using these models, it may be possible to improve the predictive capacity in benchmarking candidate therapeutics, and to identify new druggable targets by studying multicellular interactions.

血脑屏障 (BBB) 的存在极大地阻碍了脑疗法的发展。经典的 transwell 模型能够概括药物通过 BBB 转运的许多重要方面，但不能完全预测体内大脑摄取。物种差异进一步使实验疗法从台式到临床的转化复杂化。人类 BBB 模型为这个问题提供了一些解决方案。通过在多细胞、流动和物理结构方面增加设备的复杂性，已经开发了 BBB 的生理模型，可以更忠实地模拟 BBB 运输和体内平衡的不同方面。使用这些模型，有可能提高对候选疗法进行基准测试的预测能力，并通过研究多细胞相互作用来确定新的可药物靶点。