Single-cell transcriptome sequencing for opening the blood-brain barrier through specific mode electroacupuncture stimulation

2025 · doi:10.1101/2025.08.01.668239
preprint OA: closed
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View at publisher

Abstract

Background The blood-brain barrier (BBB) interferes with the treatment of central nervous system disorders owing to the complexity of its structure and restrictive function. Thus, it is challenging to develop central nervous system drug delivery strategies. Specific mode electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation can effectively open the BBB in rats. Methods Here, we used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to comprehensively map the cell population in the Sprague-Dawley rat cerebral cortex. Results We identified 23 cell subsets and eight types of cells in the brain by cell annotation. scRNA-seq revealed transcriptional changes in the cerebral cortex under EA. Conclusions Our findings offer valuable insights into the molecular and cellular modifications in the brain resulting from EA intervention and serve as a resource for drug delivery across healthy and diseased states. Innovative approaches to enhance BBB opening will lead to more effective therapeutic plans and enhanced drug delivery.
Full text 1,255 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 4 sections · click to expand

Abstract

Background The blood-brain barrier (BBB) interferes with the treatment of central nervous system disorders owing to the complexity of its structure and restrictive function. Thus, it is challenging to develop central nervous system drug delivery strategies. Specific mode electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation can effectively open the BBB in rats.

Methods

Here, we used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to comprehensively map the cell population in the Sprague-Dawley rat cerebral cortex.

Results

We identified 23 cell subsets and eight types of cells in the brain by cell annotation. scRNA-seq revealed transcriptional changes in the cerebral cortex under EA.

Conclusions

Our findings offer valuable insights into the molecular and cellular modifications in the brain resulting from EA intervention and serve as a resource for drug delivery across healthy and diseased states. Innovative approaches to enhance BBB opening will lead to more effective therapeutic plans and enhanced drug delivery. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Footnotes 1. Replace the human brain image in Figure 1a with a rat brain image. 2. Add some background information to the introduction (lines 60-71 in the manuscript).

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00