A non - invasive technique design to institutionalise chemotherapy medication through the protective roadblock surround the mind has beensuccessfully trialed for the first timeon a patient with learning ability cancer . Using an “ ultrasonic screwdriver , ” this technique is a vast improvement on an early method acting trialed last year , asannouncedby the Toronto - base researcher .
Theblood - brain barrieris a lattice - similar web that acts to keep harmful thing like pathogens out of the brain , while allowing useful content through . It ’s very good at doing its job , but unfortunately that represents a hurdle in medicine : If a person has a cancerous tumor inside the brain , stupefy drug through without compromising it examine unsufferable . Last year , however , researchers made anincredible breakthrough , slightly literally : The lineage - brain roadblock was breached for the first time using a technique that left it inviolate post - subprogram .
aesculapian scientists from the Pitié - Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris placed special emitters that would bring forth a certain frequence of wakeless – ultrasound , beyond our hearing capabilities – inside the brains of four people with a malignant brainpower tumour ( a glioblastoma ) . minuscule house of cards , or “ microbubbles , ” were then injected into the affected role , and provide to happen up against the normally dense blood - brain roadblock .
Thehigh - intensity focused ultrasoundemitters were then activated , cause the microbubbles to expound and contract about 200,000 time per second . This forced apart the cells that make up the barrier ’s lattice , allow a chemotherapy drug to make it through the roadblock andtreat the tumour . The ultrasound emitters were set as tightlipped to the tumor as possible , and the roadblock is only weakened for two minutes or so over a small patch , leaving the ease of the brain protected .
Although effective , the intervention was n’t particularly precise , and it did require an “ encroaching ” technique : implanting ultrasound emitters into the brain . Thisnew revised method acting , developed by Dr. Todd Mainprize and Dr. Kullervo Hynynen at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto , is more precise and non - invading .
first , as before , chemotherapy medicationis injected into the blood stream , as are the microbubbles . After locating the mark neoplasm using an MRI scanner , a focused beam of sonography from outside of the dead body is directed at the blood - brain barrier , allowing the microbubbles to hover and open up an improbably small department of it up , allowing the medication to get through . The bubbles are eventually reabsorb into the lung . Importantly , no surgery of any kind was involved .
Last week , the procedure wastrialedon the first of ten issue with brain tumors , a center - older adult female . 24 hours after the breach was initiated , the tumor and the surrounding tissue paper were taste and removed surgically , then sent to a research lab to examine how much of the medicine reached the target areas .
If this trial proves to be in effect , safe , and practicable , this non - invading technique will inspire neurosurgery , and not just for cancer treatments : Alzheimer ’s disease is another target area for this ultrasound - based method , and already , in - roads are being made .
