Unlocking the Brain’s Barriers: Reversible Drug Delivery with Focused Ultrasound

Industry: The research is situated within the medical and biomedical engineering industries, specifically focusing on improving drug delivery to the brain for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) diseases.

Challenge: Most drugs for CNS diseases struggle to penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a protective shield for the brain. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of using focused ultrasound (FUS) with microbubbles to open the BBB in a controlled, noninvasive, and reversible manner.

Extraordinary Aspects of the Paper: The study reveals that both the acoustic pressure and pulse length of the FUS can influence the extent and duration of BBB opening. The researchers found that higher pressures and longer pulse lengths generally led to more significant and longer-lasting openings. Importantly, the study confirmed the reversibility of the BBB opening without causing any detectable damage to brain tissue, highlighting the safety and potential clinical applicability of the method.

Equipment & Sensors Used:

GaGe Digitizer: Used for capturing ultrasound signals. Part number and description were not specified in the paper.

FUS Transducer: Single-element, spherical-segment transducer with a center frequency of 1.5 MHz, focal depth of 60 mm, and radius of 30 mm (Imasonic SAS, France).

Imaging Transducer: Pulse-echo ultrasound transducer with a center frequency of 10 MHz, focal depth of 60 mm, and radius of 11.2 mm (Olympus NDT, USA).

Power Amplifier: 50-dB amplifier (Electronic Navigation Industries, USA).

Pulse Generator: Function generator (Agilent Technologies Inc., USA).

MRI System: 9.4-T microimaging MRI system (Bruker Biospin, USA).

Hydrophone: Needle hydrophone (HGL-0400, Onda Corp., USA) for transducer calibration.

Microbubbles: Definity microbubbles diluted in phosphate buffered saline (PBS).

MRI Contrast Agent: Gadodiamide (Omniscan, GE Healthcare, USA)

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