How to better treat diseases of the brain? A team of French researchers from the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital (Paris) has developed a new device that makes it possible to better penetrate drugs into the brain. This technique, which uses ultrasound, could treat certain patients more effectively. brain tumors incurable and other brain pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers publish results of first clinical trials in journal Science Translational Medicine.
Spread the treatment into the brain cells
Started in 2014, this clinical trial was carried out on around 20 participants with brain tumors. The technique consists first of all of integrating a chip into the patient’s skull. This will diffuse ultrasound at very low power, painlessly, at the start of each chemotherapy. The drugs then released into the body by this treatment will more easily penetrate into the brain cells. The effectiveness of the therapy is then multiplied by five. And for good reason: ultrasound opens what scientists call the blood-brain barrier, which separates the blood from the central nervous system of which the brain is a part. Concretely, this barrier serves to protect brain cells from potentially dangerous molecules or organisms that circulate in the blood. It makes the small blood vessels in the brain waterproof. But the downside is that pharmaceutical molecules don’t reach brain cells either.
Treat brain tumors and Alzheimer’s disease
While this technique seems promising for reducing brain tumors, it could be generalized to other brain pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers are indeed planning to diffuse treatment molecules specifically to areas of the brain affected by amyloid plaques typical of this neurodegenerative disease. The first clinical trials showed that the brain functions of patients were not affected by ultrasound, but researchers must continue their research on a larger number of patients to validate the effectiveness of the device.
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