The hCMEC/D3 human brain microvascular endothelial cell line was obtained from Merck Millipore (Germany). To maintain the cells’ brain endothelial-like features, we used cells under passage number 35 [16 (
link)]. Cells were grown in dishes coated with rat tail collagen and maintained in an incubator at 37°C with 5% CO
2. The basal medium used was MCDB 131 (Pan Biotech, Germany) supplemented with 5% fetal bovine serum,
GlutaMAX (100 ×, Life Technologies, USA),
lipid supplement (100 ×, Life Technologies, USA), 10 μg/ml ascorbic acid, 550 nM hydrocortisone, 37.5 μg/ml heparin, 1 ng/ml
basic fibroblast growth factor (Roche, USA), 5 μg/ml insulin, 5 μg/ml transferrin, 5 ng/ml selenium supplement (100x, PanBiotech), 10 mM HEPES, and gentamycin (50 μg/ml). We changed the medium every two or three days. When the cultures reached almost 90% confluence, we passaged them to rat tail collagen-coated 96-well plates (
E-plate, Agilent, USA) for impedance measurement assays, cell culture inserts (0.4 μm pore size, cellQUART, Sabeu, Germany) for barrier integrity assays and
96-well black-wall plates (Corning, USA) for ROS measurement. Before each experiment, the medium was supplemented with 10 mM LiCl for 24 hours to improve BBB properties [17 (
link)]. For further characterization and gene expression studies please see [15 (
link)–17 (
link), 24 (
link)].
Vágvölgyi M., Laczkó D., Santa-Maria A.R., Vigh J.P., Walter F.R., Berkecz R., Deli M.A., Tóth G, & Hunyadi A. (2024). 17-Oxime ethers of oxidized ecdysteroid derivatives modulate oxidative stress in human brain endothelial cells and dose-dependently might protect or damage the blood-brain barrier. PLOS ONE, 19(2), e0290526.