blood-brain barrier

Simultaneous localized brain mild hyperthermia and blood-brain barrier opening via feedback-controlled transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound and microbubbles

Simultaneous localized brain mild hyperthermia and blood-brain barrier opening via feedback-controlled transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound and microbubbles IEEE EMBS
We present a synergistic focused ultrasound-based brain drug delivery method for both spatiotemporally precise transcranial mild hyperthermia and simultaneous localized blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening. We demonstrated that with the presence of microbubbles, transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound mild hyperthermia can be achieved at significantly reduced powers and prolonged BBB opening can be simultaneously achieved with hyperthermia sonications in a rodent model. No structural abnormality, edema, hemorrhage, or acute microglial activation was observed in the target region via MR imaging and histology. This study provides a new strategy for enhanced drug delivery in brain tissues with a high clinical translation potential. read more

Acoustic holograms for bilateral blood-brain barrier opening in a mouse model

Author(s)3: thinkdm2, Elisa E. Konofagou
Acoustic holograms for bilateral blood-brain barrier opening in a mouse model IEEE EMBS
Microbubble-enhanced focused ultrasound (FUS) allows the blood-brain barrier opening (BBBO) for drug delivery into the brain. However, single-element FUS technologies do not allow high-resolution, multi-focal, simultaneous targeting, in addition to distortion of the focused beam due to skull aberrations. In this work, we present the first preclinical BBBO application of acoustic holograms in mice. A 3D-printed hologram coupled to a single-element focused transducer produced two symmetric foci while compensating for the skull aberrations. T1-weighted MRI showed BBBO at two quasi-spherical spots. This work demonstrates the feasibility of hologram-assisted BBBO for low-cost and highly-localized drug delivery in a mouse brain. read more