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American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 5936(325), p. 83-87, 2009

DOI: 10.1126/science.1173196

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Meningococcal type IV pili recruit the polarity complex to cross the brain endothelium.

Journal article published in 2009 by Mathieu Coureuil ORCID, Guillain Mikaty, Florence Miller, Hervé Lécuyer, Christine Bernard, Sandrine Bourdoulous, Guillaume Duménil, R.-M. Mege, René-Marc Mège, Babette B. Weksler, Ignacio A. Romero, Pierre-Olivier Couraud, Xavier Nassif
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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Breaking the Barrier Being able to deliver drugs into the brain to treat degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's requires the ability to traverse the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Understanding the formation of the very specific adherent junctions (AJ) and tight junctions present at the BBB cell junctions is a prerequisite to the design of such therapeutics. However, diminishing the expression of any one component involved in the formation of these intercellular junctions destroys them. Coureuil et al. (p. 83 , published online 11 June) exploited the specific recruitment of AJ proteins by Neisseria meningitidis to dissect this process. Adhesion of the bacteria to human brain endothelial cells recruited the polarity complex Par3/Par6/PKCζ required for the establishment of eukaryotic cell polarity and the formation of intercellular junctions. The bacterial recruitment of the polarity complex depleted junctional proteins at the cell-cell interface opening the intercellular junctions at the brainendothelial interface.