Objective: Our purpose is to describe methods of assessing leakiness of the blood-brain barrier and explain mechanisms for exploiting the blood-brain barrier for therapeutic purposes.
Conclusion: Knowledge of the workings of the blood-brain barrier is important for an understanding of the ways in which blood-brain barrier permeability may be used as a surrogate marker for drug therapeutic response. Manipulation of the blood-brain barrier may provide a means for selectively targeting tumors for drug delivery.