In a preclinical study published in the Journal of Controlled Release, Harvard Medical School researchers investigated the kinetics of blood-brain barrier permeability and drug delivery following single and double focused ultrasound sonications. They found that delivery of the chemotherapy agent, doxorubicin, was significantly greater when one focused ultrasound sonication was used and 1.5-fold higher when a second sonication was administered ten minutes later. Study data suggests that MRI contrast agent Gd-DTPA may be useful as a surrogate tracer in estimating drug delivery to the brain following focused ultrasound-induced blood-brain barrier disruption.
Lead author of the study is Juyoung Park, PhD, a research fellow in radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Co-authors are Yongzhi Zhang, MD; Natalia Vykhodtseva, PhD; Ferenc A. Jolesz, MD; and Nathan J. McDannold, PhD.