Brain barrier opened for first time to treat cancer

Rucking_Fetard

For the first time, doctors have opened and closed the brain's protector – the blood-brain barrier – on demand. The breakthrough will allow drugs to reach diseased areas of the brain that are otherwise out of bounds. Ultimately, it could make it easier to treat conditions such as Alzheimer's and brain cancer.


The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a sheath of cells that wraps around blood vessels (in black) throughout the brain. It protects precious brain tissue from toxins in the bloodstream, but it is a major obstacle for treating brain disorders because it also blocks the passage of drugs.


Several teams have opened the barrier in animals to sneak drugs through. Now Michael Canney at Paris-based medical start-up CarThera, and his colleagues have managed it in people using an ultrasound brain implant and an injection of microbubbles.


When ultrasound waves meet microbubbles in the blood, they make the bubbles vibrate. This pushes apart the cells of the BBB.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26432-brain-barrier-opened-for-first-time-to-treat-cancer.html#.VEeblvnF9uw?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=twitter&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL-twitter

steddyeddy

I'm surprised how little people are wetting themselves on this forum over this. This has the potential to revolution treatment of brain disease.

Frito

steddyeddy wrote: »

I'm surprised how little people are wetting themselves on this forum over this. This has the potential to revolution treatment of brain disease.

Ive nearly been wetting myself, but from a lay perspective.
My mother had renal impairment during high dose chemo for PCNSNHL, and HAIs and subsequently developed PRES. It nearly killed her. She can't walk now, is mildly dysarthric, has bilateral tremors but is thankfully still in remission after two years.
Of course I can't jump to conclusions but this could reduce these risks.

Harold Finchs Machine

steddyeddy wrote: »

I'm surprised how little people are wetting themselves on this forum over this. This has the potential to revolution treatment of brain disease.

Not really surprising, if you go back even just over the last 4/5 pages you'll get 5 or so Threads with groundbreaking stuff in it, with just the OP and that's it.

The Diabetes Thread in LTI is a total mystery aswell, 2 groud breaking studies posted over there, combined, have a real possibility of a very real cure coming soon and it bearly registered, complaining about new Retinal Scan Roll out went on for pages. Bewildering.


I wonder is there any point in posting this over there,

In human clinical trial, UAB to test drug shown to completely reverse diabetes in human islets, mice.

uab.edu/news/innovation/item/5508?+frontdoornews

Xeyn

To be fair there are lots of 'miraculous' breakthroughs with huge potential happening all the time. It's rare that the potential is realised.
This could possible lead to great strides in medicine or it could fade away to the background for decades or forever.
I think people are generally more piqued by practical breakthroughs but I agree that this is altogether quite interesting.

Harold Finchs Machine

Xeyn wrote: »

It's rare that the potential is realised.
This could possible lead to great strides in medicine or it could fade away to the background for decades or forever.

Why does this happen??? Seriously!

Ive come across a rake of space related stuff in particular lately, physics/planets/Black Hole work thats come off the back of studies from 40 Years ago, OR WORSE, damn near the same work thats thought new till its published and the original then pointed out.

Good few tech/Health ones aswell, same thing.

Tech is particulary bad for "do overs" every decade or so.

The World Bank did a check to see how many times their big studies/reports were being downloaded there lately, PDFs on there site, all kinds of Topics.

Damn near zero.

steddyeddy

Xeyn wrote: »

To be fair there are lots of 'miraculous' breakthroughs with huge potential happening all the time. It's rare that the potential is realised.
This could possible lead to great strides in medicine or it could fade away to the background for decades or forever.
I think people are generally more piqued by practical breakthroughs but I agree that this is altogether quite interesting.

TBH I think the medical community need to have a stronger appreciation of biochemistry and molecular biology. Just because something doesn't involve immediate clinical trials it doesn't mean it isn't medically relevant. Opening the blood brain barrier expands the types of drugs we're able to use to treat brain disorders. This should be self evident.

EoghanIRL

Blood brain barrier as in astrocytes ?

steddyeddy

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Blood brain barrier as in astrocytes ?

Well that's one way of describing it. It's a selectively permeable barrier that lets certain molecules through and not others. It heavily influences drug design and was one of the biggest barriers to effectively treating brain disease in medical history.

maninasia

Don't rock the boat now, you might get an interesting discussion going. :cool: