My name is Afsana Ayshi. I’m a rising junior at the Grove School of Engineering majoring in
Biomedical Engineering with a pre-med concentration. I want to pursue Medicine in the future. I
am passionate about designing and learning about medical technologies while also ensuring
efficient patient care in the future. My project was learning to generate the in vitro blood-brain
barrier (BBB) with comparable Trans-BBB Electric Resistance(TEER)/Permeability to Cy5-
PEG-PLGA Nanoparticles using immortalized Human Cerebral Microvascular Endothelial
Cells(HCMECs). This project used cellular and microcirculation approaches to quantify how
certain drugs’ size and concentration (in the form of Nanoparticles) impact their delivery through
the barrier. The motivation came from the BBB’s special anatomical structure, which strictly
regulates the exchange of substances between the blood and cerebral parenchyma, resulting in
low permeability and inefficient transportation of medications to the Central Nervous
System(CNS).