Richard J. Price, Ph.D. is investigating a novel combination of nanoparticles, microbubbles and focused ultrasound – a combination that he believes could effectively treat and possibly cure diseases of the central nervous system, including brain tumors, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Price is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia and Research Director of UVA’s Focused Ultrasound Center. He has received a $100,000 research award from the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation to study whether nanoparticles, in combination with microbubbles the size of a red blood cell, can actually deliver targeted therapies across the tight blood brain barrier (BBB) to kill glioblastoma multiforme tumors when oscillated with a focused ultrasound beam. Highly aggressive and deadly, glioblastomas, or GBMs, are the most common form of primary brain cancer and have an extremely poor prognosis. Click here to read full report.