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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Bioengineers look to create a 3-D model of the blood-brain barrier
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-08-07 19:00:00
	Description:		Now that researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have created a 3-D bioprint of living blood vessels, they’re moving towards making more tissue-specific vasculature. Bioengineer Monica Moya says she’s particularly interested in the brain. "So, we’re trying to build the blood-brain barrier, which is the blood vessels in your brain that are responsible for making sure that not just anything gets across, but that’s an interesting field because sometimes you do want things to get across." For example, you’d want certain drugs to get across that barrier to treat a tumor, but they don’t always make it. "And that’s actually one of the challenges of people that end up with brain tumors, is that it’s hard to treat and it’s hard to deliver across the blood-brain barrier and then there’s cases where there’s stuff that goes across the blood-brain barrier and you want to prevent it from getting across the barrier. So, having a model that you can test is beneficial." Moya and her team have successfully 3D printed structures with living cells and biomaterials using ‘bio-inks’, which enabled human capillaries to develop on their own.
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