Protein profile of brain endothelial cells

Blood-brain barrier (BBB) surrounding the brain capillaries forms a physical, chemical, and immunological barrier. It is evolved to protect the brain from toxins and pathogens while maintaining the homeostasis of it. The BBB is selective to many large and small molecules and proteins; that becomes a restriction when delivering drugs to treat brain diseases as >98% of therapeutic drugs cannot pass through the BBB. Many of the brain's transport mechanisms are shared in other organs; however, receptor-mediated transcytosis (RMT) targets some of the over-expressed proteins in brain endothelial cells. Therefore, RMT remains one of the delivery mechanisms that potentially lead specific target delivery without causing systemic toxicity. However, there is still a need to identify new proteins enriched and abundant on brain endothelial cells than other organs.
This project investigates the differential expression of proteins in the brain endothelial cells compared to other organs' endothelial using -omics (transcriptomics and/or proteomics) data. Students would be expected to look into the literature, identify potential datasets, and perform various analyses on the data to identify proteins expressed abundantly on the brain endothelial cells.