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October 29, 2021 03:30 am

MRI and Ultrasound Can Sneak Cancer Drugs Into the Brain

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: In a new study, researchers temporarily made the blood-brain barrier more permeable, allowing a monoclonal antibody to target cancer that had spread to the brain. Scientists made it possible for the drug to cross the barrier -- a protective membrane which prevents most larger molecules from entering the brain -- using focused ultrasound beams guided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Though there has been promising research on the technique, it had never been used to deliver a drug to the brain. Scientists also used a system of radioactive tagging to show that more of the drug had reached the tumors. No patient had notable side effects from the treatment. Though the study was preliminary, it could open the door to treating a whole range of diseases impacting the brain. In the study, four patients with a type of metastatic breast cancer, Her2-positive, first received a treatment of trastuzumab, a common monoclonal antibody treatment also called Herceptin. Collectively, the patients received 20 treatments -- up to six each. The ultrasound therapy took place inside a high-resolution MRI scanner that the researchers used to target the treatment. The researchers used a hemispheric helmet with 1024 ultrasound transducers to deliver the ultrasound, targeting it by both moving the helmet and adjusting the voltage across individual transducers, causing a slight difference in the phase of the ultrasound that can correct for variations in the thickness of the skull. [...] While the ultrasound was delivered, the patients were also receiving an infusion of lipid-based microbubbles. In combination with targeted ultrasound, the microbubbles produce the temporary permeability of the blood-brain barrier. Scientists still don't entirely know why this is. In the 1950s, researchers started to notice that ultrasound seemed to break down the blood-brain barrier. Hynynen came across these early studies while doing cancer research and started to try the technique to make the barrier more permeable. But in animal studies, using only ultrasound didn't consistently avoid injury. Only when the researchers tried using microbubbles did they avoid inflicting damage.

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