West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) announced a potential breakthrough for advancement Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers are using a focused ultrasound (FUS) system of technology to help the brain absorb treatment faster. This system temporarily opens the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to let anti-amyloid-beta antibodies such as aducaumab, lecanemab and donanemab, have higher access to targeted areas of the brain.
Patients would wear a special helmet and enter an MRI scanner. The helmet has over 1,000 focused ultrasound waves and would agitate microscopic bubbles injected into the blood stream. As the bubbles vibrate, they open the BBB allowing medication to get through to the targeted brain tissue.
Executive Chair of NRI and lead author of the study, Dr. Ali Rezai said, “Focused ultrasound is a non-invasive outpatient procedure for BBB opening with great promise for improving drug delivery to the brain.” He also said, “It’s promising results, but it’s only a few patients. So, we need to replicate it more and do more studies because people with Alzheimer’s need help and we need to accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation in this regard.”
This study was done with infusions of aducanumab. Dr. Rezai will use lecanemab in his next clinical trials next month.
Dr. Rezai believes this treatment could lead to additional breakthroughs in severe cases of drug abuse, cancerous tumors, and Parkinson’s disease.
By - FZ
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