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October 2025 Meeting Roundup

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Key Points

  • Eight recent conferences featured focused ultrasound presentations. 
  • Use the links below to access meeting programs and abstract information. 
  1. The MedTech Conference by AdvaMed
  1. International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders
  1. Alliance for Regenerative Medicine Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa
  1. FOCAL+ 2025: Frontiers in Oncologic Prostate Care and Ablative Local Therapy
  1. Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) 2025 Annual Meeting
  1. International Electrical Commission Ultrasonics Technical Committee Meetings
  1. European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO)
  1. Taiwan Association of Interventional and Therapeutic Ultrasound (TAITU)

AdvaMed 2025: The MedTech Conference 

AdvaMed’s 2025 Medtech Conference was held October 5–8 in San Diego, California. With more than 3,700 attendees from 38 countries representing 1,800 companies, this year’s event was noted as the largest ever US MedTech Conference. The keynote opening address, which was given by AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker, featured video highlights from an Exablate Neuro treatment and the story of John, a patient with Parkinson’s disease. 

Jessica Foley, PhD, vice president of product strategy at Profound Medical, Inc., and a senior consultant for the Foundation, participated in a panel discussion titled “Innovations in Cancer Care Treatment.” With about 75 attendees, audience members asked several questions about focused ultrasound during and after the session. 

“It was a great meeting with much useful content on regulatory, reimbursement, patient engagement throughout the product lifecycle, plus a multitude of insights from the CEOs of MedTech companies at all stages, sizes, and disease sectors,” said Dr. Foley. “This is a fantastic conference for learning and networking, especially for focused ultrasound companies. I also engaged with the AdvaMed team, who continue to be supportive of the Foundation’s efforts and are great partners in driving awareness of focused ultrasound and our companies, and in helping us to identify and break down barriers to the advancement of the field.” 

The entire meeting schedule is available online. 

The 2026 MedTech Conference will be held October 18–21 in Boston, with a call for sessions opening in January. 

See the Meeting Website 

International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders 

Hosted by the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS), the 2025 International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders was held October 5–9 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Thousands of clinicians, researchers, trainees and industry supporters gathered to share ideas, encourage interest in the care and research of movement disorders, and advance the related clinical and scientific discipline. 

Late Breaking Abstract 

Neurology Live reported that the data from a phase 3 clinical trial (NCT04728295) of staged, bilateral magnetic resonance–guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) pallidothalamic tractotomy were presented as late breaking. The intervention demonstrated significant motor function improvements in patients with Parkinson’s disease who are experiencing motor complications. See LBA-21: A Phase III, Pivotal Trial of Staged, Bilateral Magnetic Resonance-Guided Focused Ultrasound Pallidothalamic Tractotomy for Motor Complications in Parkinson’s Disease by M. Cruz Rodríguez-Oroz, A. Dalvi, L. Zucker, W.C. Chang, P. Wu, M. Kaplitt, H. Sarva, H. Eisenberg, P. Fishman, V. Buch, M. Matarazzo, M. del Alamo, S. Sani, M. Pourfar, and A. Mogilner. 

Regular Abstracts 

There are 17 additional abstracts listed below that may be of interest to the focused ultrasound community. Each entry is published in the journal Movement Disorders [2025; 40 (suppl 1)]. 

Search the regular abstracts and late-breaking abstracts for your own key words or areas of interest. The advanced search feature allows you to limit the results to 2025. Session recordings are also available on demand. 

The 2026 congress will be held October 4–8 in Seoul, South Korea. 

See the Meeting Website 

Alliance for Regenerative Medicine Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa

Held in Phoenix from October 6–8, the Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa is an annual conference for more than 1,500 senior executives in the cell and gene therapy industry. Partnering is a key focus of this group. 

The meeting program includes expert panels, partnership development, networking opportunities, and more than 100 company presentations. To advance research into cures, attendees discuss commercialization, clinical trial design, payment models, and supply chain platforms for advanced therapies. 

The Foundation’s Director of Gene and Cell Therapy, Frédéric Padilla, PhD, attended the conference and delivered a 15-minute overview of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, its gene and cell therapy program, and the role of focused ultrasound as an enabling technology for gene and cell delivery. 

“This meeting provided an excellent forum to understand where the field is heading and to connect with potential partners,” said Dr. Padilla. “I met with several groups interested in integrating focused ultrasound into neurological and cardiovascular cell and gene therapy programs, and there is cautious optimism about the current regulatory environment. We are also seeing strong momentum around non-viral gene delivery and personalized gene editing, which are emerging as important themes for our work going forward.” 

The content from the conference is available on demand. 

See the Meeting Website 

FOCAL+ 2025: Frontiers in Oncologic Prostate Care and Ablative Local Therapy 2025

With the goal of advancing focal therapies for partial gland therapy of prostate cancer, the FOCAL+ conference was held October 9–11, 2025, in National Harbor, Maryland. Course objectives included describing the rationale for focal therapy in prostate cancer, identifying optimal candidates for treatment, evaluating the latest evidence on oncological and functional outcomes of focal therapy, and describing post-therapy surveillance strategies, and preventing, identifying, and managing complications of focal therapy, among others. 

As outlined in the meeting program, the following presentations and posters may be of interest to the focused ultrasound community: 

Focal Therapy Remix: Techniques, Trials, and Tech 

  • A Multicenter Evaluation of Infield Recurrence Rates in Patients Treated with Focal HIFU or Cryotherapy by Deepika Reddy, MD, PhD 
  • Post-Operative Sentiment in Patients After MRI-Guided Transurethral Ultrasound Ablation (TULSA) of Localized Prostate Cancer: Quantifying Regret and Correlating Patient-Reported Regret with Functional Outcomes by Andrew Murphy, MD 
  • HIFU in Prostate Cancer: Evolution, Evidence, and Emerging Frontiers by Sebastien Crouzet, MD 

BPH Management Course 

  • Transurethral Ultrasound Ablation for BPH by Chandler Dora, MD 

Poster Session 

  • 01: Cryotherapy and High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound: National Utilization Trends (2016-2022) by Christopher Edwards, MD 
  • 07: Focal One – Robotic Focal HIFU by Giorgi Burjaliani 

FOCAL+ 2026 will be held September 24–26 in San Diego, California. 

See the Meeting Website 

Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) 2025 Annual Meeting

The 75th annual CNS meeting took place in Los Angeles, California, from October 10–15, 2025, with the CNS Tumor Section held on the first two days (October 10–11). Chetan Bettegowda, MD, PhD, director of Neurological Surgery at Johns Hopkins University gave a keynote address at the Tumor Section event. Suzanne LeBlang, MD, the Foundation’s director of clinical relationships, attended this meeting. 

“The impressive number of oral presentations, dedicated sessions, and posters at the CNS meeting highlights the increased clinical adoption and recent research advances in using focused ultrasound for a variety of neurologic disorders,” said Dr. LeBlang.

The following presentations, symposiums, and seminars featured focused ultrasound content that may be of interest to the community: 

A Monday luncheon seminar titled “Decision Making During Focused Ultrasound Thalamotomy” was led by Howard M. Eisenberg, MD, Casey H. Halpern, MD, Drew S. Kern, MD, MS, Vibhor Krishna, MD, Francisco Ponce, MD, Sepehr Sani, MD, and Jasmine Thum, MD. 

Tumor Section: Adjunct Therapies Beyond Resection 

  • Sonodynamic Therapy by Nader Sanai, MD 

Tumor Section: Neurosurgeon-Centric Clinical Trials 

  • Use of Focused Ultrasound for Drug Delivery by Adam Sonabend, MD 

Use of Ultrasound Technologies in Neurosurgical Oncology 

  • An Overview of Brain Tumor Therapy with Transcranial Focused Ultrasound by Shayan Moosa, MD 
  • Sonocloud Clinical Trial for Enhanced Drug Delivery to Brain Tumors by Adam M. Sonabend, MD 
  • FUS for Opening the BBB: Clinical Implications and Future by Ying Meng, MD 
  • Noninvasive Sonobiopsy by Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, MBA 
  • Ultrasound-Based Histotripsy Technology for Treatment of Brain Malignancies by Aditya S. Pandey, MD 
  • Sonodynamic Therapy by Constantinos G. Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD 

Guidelines IV – Brain Metastases 

  • LITT and Focused Ultrasound for Brain Metastases 

Symposia

  • 3B. Advances in Neuromodulation for Pain: Head to Toe 
  • 14. Movement Disorder Surgery: Approaches and Techniques 

Abstracts 
Searching the oral abstract and presentation database for the following focused ultrasound–related keywords produced the number of results listed in parentheses (Note that this is a slow search engine, give it a minute or two): 

  • Focused ultrasound (12) 
  • MRgFUS (3) 
  • Sonodynamic (2) 
  • HIFU (1) 
  • Liquid biopsy (1) 
  • Sonocloud (1) 

Posters 
Searching the poster database for the following focused ultrasound–related keywords produced the number of results listed in parentheses: 

  • Focused ultrasound (28) 
  • MRgFUS (7) 
  • Liquid biopsy (7) 
  • HIFU (5) 
  • Sonodynamic (1) 
  • Microbubble (1) 

Media Coverage in the Daily Northwestern highlighted the posters presented by Northwestern undergraduate student Sepehr Khavari. One of his two research posters, “Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation for Dementia: A Scoping Review,” analyzed the effect of using low-intensity focused ultrasound to treat dementia. 

The 2026 CNS Annual Meeting will be held October 31– November 4 in Washington, DC. 

Search the 2025 Meeting Program  

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Ultrasonics Technical Committee Meetings

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the world’s leading organization producing international standards for all electrotechnologies. IEC members, including Foundation team members, develop international standards and conformity assessments to make the world safer and more efficient. 

The Foundation’s Director of Applied Physics Research, Frédéric Padilla, PhD, attended the October 13–17 Technical Committee 87 (TC87)/Subcommittee 62b meetings in Arlington, Virginia. 

“IEC develops international standards that guide the safe and effective use of therapeutic ultrasound,” said Dr. Padilla. “IEC’s TC87 Working Group 6 is developing standards for the characterization of high-intensity therapeutic ultrasound (HITU) systems and focusing transducers, work that is essential for harmonizing how systems are measured and for advancing safety across therapeutic applications.” 

Following the 2021 Bubble Activity in Therapeutic Ultrasound workshop series organized by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (or AIUM), an independent working group led by Brian Fowlkes, PhD (University of Michigan), Subha Maruvada, PhD (United States Food and Drug Administration), and Dr. Padilla has been meeting regularly to draft a technical specification on cavitation detection and monitoring for therapeutic ultrasound. 

Dr. Padilla added, “Our working group’s draft was presented during the IEC meeting, and we plan to submit it as a new work item proposal to IEC TC 87/WG 6 in the spring of 2026. The Foundation is committed to supporting these standardization efforts and providing relevant input from the field.” 

IEC develops voluntary international standards that are widely adopted by industry and often referenced by regulators and purchasing bodies, which makes them effectively essential for companies that market medical devices globally. 

European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO) 2025

EANO’s 20th annual meeting was held in Prague, Czech Republic, from October 16–19. With more than 1,500 attendees, the congress is designed to foster exchange and collaboration between stakeholders at all career stages in the field of neuro-oncology. Experts in clinical and basic neuro-oncology, neurosurgery, neuropathology, neuroradiology, and radiation oncology, along with nursing and other allied health professionals attend this conference. 

Foundation Consultant Francesco Prada, MD, a neurosurgeon at IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta in Milan, Italy, served as faculty on EANO’s Educational Day by presenting a basic science track on “Strategies for BBB Disruption.” 

Abstracts 
At EANO, abstract presentations provided updated information on the SONOBIRD clinical trial, the sonodynamic therapy clinical trial at Barrow Neurological Institute, a sonodynamic therapy mechanistic study in German, and Cordance Medical’s handheld focused ultrasound device. Each is listed below: 

  • SONOBIRD: A Phase 3 Trial of BBB Opening with the Sonocloud-9 in Recurrent Glioblastoma Patients Receiving IV Carboplatin by A. Carpentier, J. Duerinck, A. Pérez Núñez, M. Geurts, D. Higgins, B. Gill, M. Canney, C. Desseaux, G. Bouchoux, O. Chinot, R. Stupp, and A. Sonabend from Sorbonne Université, AP-HP Hôpitaux Universitaires La Pitié Salpêtrière – Charles Foix, Paris, France; UZ Brussel, Jette, Belgium; Instituto de Investigación Biomédicas I+12, Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain; Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, United States; Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, United States; Carthera, Lyon, France; Hôpital de la Timone, Marseille, France; and Malnati Brain Tumor Institute of the Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States. 
  • A Clinical Update of a First-In-Human Phase 0/1 Trial of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid Sonodynamic Therapy (5-ALA SDT) in Recurrent Glioblastoma by N. Sanai, A. Tien, A. Tovmasyan, Y. Chang, T. Margaryan, K. Hendrickson, J. Eschbacher, W. Yoo, J. Harmon, A. Hong, C. Quarles, L. Alhilali, I. Barani, Z. Mirzadeh, and S. Mehta from the Ivy Brain Tumor Center at Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ, United States 
  • Sonodynamic Therapy with a Single Neoadjuvant, Diffuse Delivery of Low-Intensity Ultrasound with 5-ALA in Treatment-Naïve Glioblastoma Results in Tumor-Specific Cytotoxic Edema and Increased Apoptosis by M. Müther, M. Gerwing, S. S. Bilgin, C. Thomas, J. Villanueva-Meyer, V. Agarwal, L. Stögbauer, J. Schroeteler, and W. Stummer from University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, Montefiore Health Center, New York, NY, United States, and Klinikum Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany 
  • Development of a Hand-Held Intraoperative Focused Ultrasound Device to Open the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) by J. Young, C. Karunakaran, M. Jones, J. Marshall, B. Ramamurthy, and J. de Groot from the University of California, San Francisco, and Cordance Medical, Mountain View, CA, United States 

Looking ahead to the 2026 meeting, Dr Prada says, “Next year, we would like to plan a focused ultrasound session at EANO, which will be held in Italy. EANO has clearly shown a growing appetite for technologies that bridge basic science and clinical translation. My hope for the Rome meeting is to bring together clinicians, physicists, and industry partners in a dedicated session that demonstrates how focused ultrasound can move from promising mechanistic insights to practical therapeutic pathways for patients.”

Search the Abstract Book 

See the Meeting Website 

Taiwan Association of Interventional and Therapeutic Ultrasound (TAITU)

The joint meeting of TAITU and the Taiwan-Japan-Korea Interventional Ultrasound Symposium was held October 18, 2025, at National Taiwan University Hospital. Prof. Wen-Shing Chen was the meeting chair and provided opening remarks and led the general assembly portion of the meeting. With approximately 40 clinicians and researchers in attendance, the agenda included the following presentations and faculty: 

  • Focused Ultrasound (FUS) Thermal Ablation by Dr. Cheng-chia Lee and Dr. Ko-Ting Chen 
  • Ultrasonic Stimulation Techniques for Neuromodulation Research: In Vitro and In Vivo Studies by Prof. Jinhyoung Park and Prof. Wen-Shing Chen 
  • Development of Microbubble for Ultrasound-Mediated Brain-Targeted Drug Delivery by Dr. Omata and Prof. Gin-Shen Chen 
  • Biomedical Applications of Vortex Ultrasound by Asst. Prof. Ching-Hsiang Fan and Prof. Gin-Shen Chen 

“My presentation included protocol decision making for various indications of FUS thermal ablation,” said neurosurgeon Justin Cheng-chia Lee, MD, PhD, who serves as Secretary General for the Taiwan Society for Stereotactic Functional Neurosurgery and Radiosurgery while also treating patients at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and teaching at Yang-Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan. “The microbubble presentation created much discussion because a previous literature report suggested that monodispersed microbubbles were less efficient than polydispersed microbubbles in opening the blood-brain barrier, but this appears to be contradictory to the current study’s findings. We discussed potential explanations for this discrepancy. We also discussed what additional advantages long-acting microbubbles offer as compared to other commonly used commercial microbubbles – beyond improved drug delivery efficiency and a better safety profile due to easier cavitation control.” 

The date and location of the next meeting have not yet been determined, but this meeting is usually held in October. 

The Foundation thanks Dr. Lee for providing this meeting report. 

See the Meeting Website

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