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About our Editors


Nancy Joan Abbott, Honorary Advisor
King's College London, UK
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N. Joan Abbott, MA, PhD, Cambridge University UK, Professor of Neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL) has more than 40 years’ experience in the field of the blood brain barrier (BBB) and the fluid microenvironment of the brain, with >130 publications and reviews. She was post-doctoral fellow at Duke University and University College London, before being appointed to faculty at KCL. She was Director of the KCL Centre for Neuroscience Research 2000-2003. She heads a research team in the BBB Group, within the King’s College Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. Prof Abbott’s research interests include the physiology, pharmacology, toxicology and pathophysiology of the BBB. A further interest is the measurement and prediction of drug distribution to the CNS, including the influence of brain fluid dynamics, in normal and pathological conditions. She has helped to develop, validate and apply several in vitro models of the BBB, including a tight porcine brain endothelial cell model and a co-culture model of rat brain endothelial cells grown above astrocytes. The BBB Group at KCL has collaborated with several pharmaceutical companies on applied BBB research, and Prof Abbott, Dr DJ Begley and Dr JE Preston run the ‘KCL BBB Consortium with Industry’, organizing meetings and consultancy. Prof Abbott has served on several national and international committees and editorial boards, including the Council of the European Society for Neurochemistry, the Committee of the Physiological Society (Chair 1997-2000) and grants panels (BBSRC, Wellcome Trust). She has organised several international meetings, including CVB2001, International Conference on Cerebral Vascular Biology in Cambridge UK, and currently organises two meetings a year for the KCL BBB Consortium with Industry.