With 25 citations, a Todd Mainprize et al. paper in Scientific Reports was one of the most cited focused ultrasound peer-reviewed publications in 2019.
“Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in Primary Brain Tumors with Non-invasive MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound: A Clinical Safety and Feasibility Study,” is the open-access paper that shared the first published data from a clinical trial using focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in patients with glioblastoma (GBM) at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
This first-in-the-world study successfully used focused ultrasound plus microbubbles to temporarily and repeatedly disrupt the BBB in five patients with previously confirmed or suspected high-grade glioma. Each patient underwent BBB opening while receiving chemotherapy the day prior to surgical resection of the tumor. The procedure proved to be safe and feasible in the phase I, single-arm, open-label study. The team also measured increased levels of drug delivery in parts of the tumor that were sonicated.
The first patient treated in this trial underwent the procedure in November 2015.
See the paper in Scientific Reports >