Function and integrity of the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) is crucial for brain homeostasis, and its malfunction critically contributes to neurovascular and neurodegenerative disorders, including cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), a common cause of stroke and vascular dementia. So far, mechanistic studies on BBB function have been mostly conducted in mice and non-physiological in vitro models, which recapitulate disease features, but often lack complex phenotypes, have limited translatability to humans, and pose challenges for drug discovery. Therefore, we aimed to establish a fully iPSC-derived 3D model of the human blood-brain-barrier. To characterize and validate our somatic cell differentiation protocols we compared our iPSC-derived cells with commercially available human primary cells: brain microvascular endothelial cells (pEC), human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), brain vascular pericytes (pPC), brain vascular smooth muscle cells (pSMC) and midbrain astrocytes (pAS).