Potential New Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease
Written by Neal F. Kassell, MD
Published:
Today at the largest and most influential international meeting dedicated to advancing dementia science – the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in Chicago – thousands of attendees from around the world were among the first to hear the results of a landmark clinical trial of focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to facilitate drug therapy in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. These pilot trial results were also published today in the prestigious, high-impact journal, Nature Communications. Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, presented the findings of this first-of-its-kind study – Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in Alzheimer’s Disease Using MR-guided Focused Ultrasound – that demonstrated the feasibility and preliminary safety of focally, reversibly and repetitively opening the BBB. This is the first small, but critically important, step in a process that could potentially lead to a novel approach to delivering drugs to the brain to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Read More ...