Review of "The blood-brain and other neural barriers reviews and protocols" by Sukriti Nag (Editor)

This volume is one of a number in the Methods in Molecular Biology series Volume 686. It is designed as a sequel to "The Blood-Brain Barrier - Biology and Research protocols which appeared under the same publishers as part of the Methods in Molecular Medicine Volume 89 (2003). The book follows a slightly different structure to previous volumes in that it contains an number of reviews bringing key areas of the subject, which have shown significant recent development, up to date, plus further sections which contain specific protocols for blood-brain barrier study and drug delivery to the central nervous system. The volume is divided into five parts, I "Biology of the Barrier", II "Imaging the Barrier", III "Molecular Techniques to Study the Blood-Brain Barrier", IV "Models to Study the Barrier" and V "Delivery of Therapeutic Agents Across the Barrier".Part I contains six reviews which bring critical areas up to date. There is a chapter on endothelia cells (Nag), pericytes (Dore-Duffy and Cleary), astrocytes (Nag), the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (Johanson, Stopa and McMillan), the blood-retinal barrier (Runkle and Antonetti) and finally the blood-nerve barrier (Weerasuriya and Mizisin). In this way the opening section reviews the morphology and function of the cell associations forming the barriers of the CNS and directly reviews current knowledge of the different barriers between the nervous system and the systemic circulation.Part II is devoted to imaging the barrier and covers confocal microscopical detection of proteins in endothelial cells (Manias, Kapadia and Nag), MRI of permeability of contrast agents (Nagaraja et al.), pathological investigations with iron oxide microparticles (Anthony et al.), human blood-brain barrier integrity measured with MRI (Kassner and Thornhill), the blood cerebrospinal fluid barrier in the embryonic rat (Saunders et al.) and MRI studies of the blood-nerve barrier with MRI (Wessig).Part III moves on to molecular techniques and