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Abstract
Few biological structures guard their territory as jealously as the blood–brain barrier.
A continuous wall of specialized endothelial cells, welded together by tight junctions and backed up by pericytes and astrocytes, it admits the nutrients the brain needs and repels nearly everything else — including, inconveniently, the majority of medicines
we would like to deliver to it. This narrative review examines the blood–brain barrier as a living security system: its historical discovery, its cellular and molecular architecture, and the tightly regulated transport routes that allow a small, privileged set of molecules to cross.
References
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