TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kim, Brandon J.
A1  - McDonagh, Maura A.
A1  - Deng, Liwen
A1  - Gastfriend, Benjamin D.
A1  - Schubert-Unkmeir, Alexandra
A1  - Doran, Kelly S.
A1  - Shusta, Eric V.
T1  - Streptococcus agalactiae disrupts P-glycoprotein function in brain endothelial cells
JF  - Fluids and Barriers of the CNS
N2  - Bacterial meningitis is a serious life threatening infection of the CNS. To cause meningitis, blood–borne bacteria need to interact with and penetrate brain endothelial cells (BECs) that comprise the blood–brain barrier. BECs help maintain brain homeostasis and they possess an array of efflux transporters, such as P-glycoprotein (P-gp), that function to efflux potentially harmful compounds from the CNS back into the circulation. Oftentimes, efflux also serves to limit the brain uptake of therapeutic drugs, representing a major hurdle for CNS drug delivery. During meningitis, BEC barrier integrity is compromised; however, little is known about efflux transport perturbations during infection. Thus, understanding the impact of bacterial infection on P-gp function would be important for potential routes of therapeutic intervention. To this end, the meningeal bacterial pathogen, Streptococcus agalactiae, was found to inhibit P-gp activity in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived BECs, and live bacteria were required for the observed inhibition. This observation was correlated to decreased P-gp expression both in vitro and during infection in vivo using a mouse model of bacterial meningitis. Given the impact of bacterial interactions on P-gp function, it will be important to incorporate these findings into analyses of drug delivery paradigms for bacterial infections of the CNS.
KW  - Group B Streptococcus
KW  - Streptococcus agalactiae
KW  - Brain endothelial cells
KW  - P-glycoprotein
KW  - Efflux transport
KW  - Meningitis
KW  - Stem cells
KW  - P-gp
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-201895
VL  - 16
ER  -