Key Points
- TAITU’s 2023 Annual Academic Conference was held on January 20, 2024, at National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital.
- The Foundation’s Asia Ambassador, Dong-Guk Paeng, PhD, present an invited talk on transcranial focused ultrasound updates and brain stimulation.
TAITU’s Annual Academic Conference was held at National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital, where an Insightec Exablate device has been in use since the summer of 2022. This meeting is usually held in late December but was delayed one month this year, to the last month of 2023 in the lunar calendar. The theme was “International Symposium on Ultrasound Brain Stimulation,” and the meeting was supported by the Foundation.
After registration, which began at 8 am, the president of TAITU, Dr. Wen-Shiang Chen officially started the symposium with his opening remarks in both Chinese and English.
The Foundation’s Asia Ambassador, Dong-Guk Paeng, PhD, presented the first invited talk, which was an overview transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) along with recent updates on clinical trials and devices in the areas of neuromodulation. He then described brain stimulation with shock-wave lithotripsy and laser-generated carbon nanotube transducers.
Dr. Hyungmin Kim from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) gave the second invited talk, in which he described various region-specific preclinical and clinical tFUS neuromodulation studies, focusing on the treatment of stroke and cerebrovascular disease. This impressive presentation generated a lively discussion, including many questions and comments.
Dr. Hao-Li Liu, a professor at National Taiwan University and the CEO of NaviFUS, gave a well-prepared lecture about central nervous system applications of tFUS, covering the engineering design perspective of a medical device, biophysical mechanisms, and clinical adoption of blood-brain barrier opening.
A renowned physician, Dr. Min-Yen Hsiao, from the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at National Taiwan University Hospital, talked about tFUS modulation of the glymphatic system and its potential applications in stroke treatment. Studies presented included effective restoration of impaired cerebrospinal fluid by daily tFUS stimulation in a small animal model.
After a coffee break, a renowned professor, Dr. Takahiro Osada, from the Department of Neurophysiology at Juntendo University School of Medicine, gave an excellent invited talk about tFUS selective circuit modulation on human right anterior putamen and inferior frontal cortex for inhibitory effects (with the response measured by functional MRI and motor-evoked potentials). He explained the molecular and cellular mechanisms of tFUS brain circuit modulation.
Dr. Kai-Hsiang Stanley Chen, a neurologist at National Taiwan University Hospital Hsinchu Branch, presented tFUS neuromodulation combined with transcranial magnetic stimulation pulse to build up long-term plasticity in the human motor cortex.
The last speaker, Dr. Hsiang-Yu Yu, the section chief of epilepsy at the Neurologic Institute of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, gave a lecture about tFUS in seizure treatment. As a physician and epilepsy section chief, she introduced epilepsy with seizure and its treatment options focusing on tFUS treatment and then shared her experience of clinical trial phases 1 & 2 by observing intracranial EEG alteration after tFUS sonication at the seizure onset targets.
During closing remarks, Dr. Wen-Shiang Chen summarized that he really enjoyed the compact symposium and learned a lot about brain stimulation and neuromodulation by tFUS from each talk. The approximately 100 attendees, including myself, totally agreed with this opinion from the president of TAITU.
Dr. Chen also emphasized that TAITU was hosting the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound’s (ISTU’s) 2024 conference this September in Taipei. He invited everyone to attend the meeting and asked for speaker recommendations (renowned researchers and clinicians).
At the end of TAITU 2023, invited speakers and some committee members were invited to have a full course of a traditional Taiwanese lunch, which included a wealth of additional discussion.
We thank Dr. Paeng for this comprehensive meeting summary.