Blood–Brain Barrier In Vitro Models and Their Application in Toxicology The Report and Recommendations of ECVAM Workshop 49

Pilar Prieto, Bas J. Blaauboer, Albertus Gerrit de Boer, Monica Boveri, Romeo Cecchelli, Cecilia Clemedson, Sandra Coecke, Anna Forsby, Hans-Joachim Galla, Per Garberg, John Greenwood, Anna Price and Hanna Tähti

This is the report of the forty-ninth of a series of workshops organised by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM). This ECVAM workshop on in vitro models for studying the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and their application in toxicology was held at ECVAM on 19–21 May 2003. The workshop was chaired by Bas Blaauboer and was attended by pharmacologists and toxicologists from academia and industry, including experts on the BBB and in neurotoxicology. The current status of in vitro models of the BBB was discussed, focusing on their application in toxicology in general and, in particular, in regulatory toxicology in the context of the European Union (EU) chemicals policy and the Seventh Amendment to the Cosmetics Directive . An important aspect of the workshop was consideration of the inclusion of biokinetic modelling, the BBB and target organ toxicity in integrated testing strategies.