A team of scientists from Northwestern University, in the United States, has managed for the first time to open the blood-brain barrier to get the most potent chemotherapy to reach the brain to treat gioblastomas, the most aggressive and common brain tumor.
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According to an article in the specialized publication “The Lancet Oncology”, the researchers implanted an ultrasound device in the patients that uses microbubbles to open the blood-brain barrier and permeate critical parts of the brain so that the chemotherapy administered intravenously penetrates.
Precisely, one of the main obstacles until now to treat this deadly tumor had been that the most potent chemotherapy could not permeate the blood-brain barrier, a microscopic structure that protects the brain from most drugs.
Los Northwestern Medical School scientists carried out this process that lasted only four minutes with awake patientswho could go to their homes in just a few hours.
According to the results of this trial, the treatment is “safe” and was “well tolerated” by the patients, some of which were submitted up to six sessions.
Thanks to the opening of the blood-brain barrier, The sick received four to six times higher chemotherapy concentrations in their brains.
The scientists observed this increase with the different drugs, paclitaxel and carboplatin, which are not suggested to be used in patients with gioblastoma due to their difficulties in permeating the blood-brain barrier.
In addition, this is the first studio that describes how quickly the barrier closes after having been opened with sonication, or the application of ultrasound.
The scientists discovered that 30 to 60 minutes after submitting to the process, the hematoencephalic barrier would close again, which would allow optimizing the sequence of drug supply and the activation of the ultrasounds.
advance optimistic
The principal investigator and professor of the Feinberg School of Medicine at the aforementioned university, Adam Sonabend, considered the achievement as “a potentially huge advance for patients with gioblastoma”.
The neurosurgeon explained, according to the statement, that the drug currently used against gioblastomas, temozolomide, can cross the barrier but has weak effects.
The difficulty of crossing the blood-brain barrier has greatly limited the arsenal available to fight brain tumors.
Past experiments with paclitaxel injected directly into the brain have yielded promising results, but the practice has been associated with cerebral irritation and meningitis.
The use of ultrasound allows the barrier to open and close again within an hour, which provides “a temporary window after the sonication in which the brain is permeable to the drugs that circulate through the blood stream”, according to Sonabend. (I)
