New Scientist Highlights Blood Brain Barrier Research

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New Scientist, an international science magazine based in London, has featured a groundbreaking new study that could treat brain tumors using a combination of focused ultrasound and drug therapy. This story builds on the publication’s previous coverage of focused ultrasound technology. 

Kullervo Hynynen, a medical physicist at Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, will begin a study to investigate the use of focused ultrasound to reversibily open the blood brain barrier, – the protective layer around blood vessels that shields our brain against outside threats. The study hopes that once the barrier is open, microbubbles filled with chemotherapy agents will be able to enter and treat brain tumors. 

If successful, the team thinks that this procedure might also one day be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. 

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