Susana Carregal-Romero, Research Associate in the Molecular & Functional Biomarkers group and member of CIBERES, has been awarded with the Michael Balls Award. This annual award is given to the author(s) of the article in the previous year’s volume of ATLA which, in the opinion of the Associate Editors and Editorial Board, is likely to make the most significant contribution to the reduction, refinement and/or replacement of animal experimentation. 

Susana Carregal-Romero, has published a paper in collaboration with Adrián García-Salvador, Alazne Domínguez-Monedero, Paloma Gómez-Fernández, Amaia García-Bilbao and Felipe Goñi-de-Cerio (from GAIKER Technology Centre) and Joaquín Castilla (from CIC bioGUNE)
in ATLA, to who the lead author recently provided with an update on the project: “In the submitted paper, we set up and characterised 20 different BBB in vitro models, based on the combination of epithelial or endothelial cell lines and primary or immortalised astrocytes/ glial cells or their derivatives. Our research group continues its work on the development and improvement of in vitro models of the BBB, levelling up to a tri-culture model. For this aim, the group has selected different cell lines and primary cultures of microvascular, perivascular endothelial and astroglia cells, to perform and compare different in vitro BBB models to select the most reliable model”.

The article for which they have been awarded, is “Evaluation of the Influence of Astrocytes on In Vitro Blood–Brain Barrier Models”. You can find the article here