WVU in the News: Using Ultrasound to Open the Blood-Brain Barrier

When Graeme F. Woodworth, MD, decided to focus his research efforts on glioblastomas, “everybody thought it was a dead end,” the neurosurgeon recalled. Glioblastoma is treated the same way today as it was in 2005, said Woodworth, professor and chair of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

It’s been a decade since high-frequency focused ultrasound was first FDA-approved for thermal ablation therapies, with prostate tissue ablation leading the way, and later followed by therapies for essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and chronic pain.

Now, low-frequency focused ultrasound for brain therapeutics is poised for its last stretch of research before FDA approval consideration.

The parameters discussed in the newly published Device paper for reliably opening the BBB address elements such as pulse length, frequency, and acoustic power that “are variable, depending on what company’s device you have or what technology you’re using. That’s why standardization is really important,” said co-author Ali Rezai, MD, executive chair of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, whose team has studied focused ultrasound BBB opening to deliver aducanumab antibodies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.