Crossing the blood-brain barrier to better combat brain cancer

Here’s some potentially good news from Ryan Cross who wrote about Alexandre Carpentier (pictured above), a neurosurgeon at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, who used “ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier in patients with recurrent glioblastoma, the most common and deadly tumor originating in the adult brain—allowing for delivery of chemotherapy that would otherwise reach the tumor in minuscule amounts” - https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601691/ultrasound-opens-the-brain-to-promising-drugs/

As background, you should know that the protective sheath surrounding the brain’s blood supply—known as the blood-brain barrier—is a safeguard against nasty germs and toxins. But it also prevents existing drugs that could potentially be used to treat brain cancer or Alzheimer’s disease from reaching the brain.

According to Cross, “the procedure works by first injecting microbubbles into the bloodstream and then using a device implanted near patients’ tumors to send ultrasonic soundwaves into the brain, exciting the bubbles. The physical pressure of the bubbles pushing on the cells temporarily opens the blood-brain barrier, letting an injected drug cross into the brain.”

Here’s a link to the abstract: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/343/343re2

Picture: Alexandre Carpentier holds the SonoCloud device, which he has implanted in 15 brain cancer patients.

“Breaching the blood brain barrier to improve treatment of brain tumors”

This is the headline of an article I just read posted on Technology.org: http://www.technology.org/2014/01/21/breaching-blood-brain-barrier-improve-treatment-brain-tumors/

The first sentence nicely summarizes my (previous) understanding of the blood-brain barrier: “The effectiveness of most cancer treatments targeting the central nervous system (CNS) has been limited due to body’s own defenses, particularly the blood brain barrier, which is difficult to breach for most conventional therapies.”

Gretchen Reynold’s in her thoughtful book, The First 20 Minutes, explained the “blood-brain” issue so simply and eloquently I felt like this was an insurmountable barrier.

Well it was…until the brainiacs (i.e. scientists) at University of Chicago “…showed that intranasal administration of stem cell-based therapeutics may be effective in breaching the blood brain barrier and treating gliomas – the most common type of brain tumor – in mice.”

Ok, this is mice not people so I’m not jumping up and down just yet. 

But the article says that “This findings suggest that this method may be effective for treating medulloblastomas and other cerebellar tumors, which are particularly common in children.”

When they figure that out, I will be jumping up and down.

John

PS – if you are a brainiac yourself, here’s a link to the abstract in the journal of Molecular Therapy http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/vaop/naam/abs/mt2013199a.html

Image credit: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/photo_19698894_human-blood-health-care-and-medical-concept-with-red-blood-cells-flowing-in-a-vein-with-one-in-the-s.html'>lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo</a>