Breaking the Blood-Brain Barrier: Using Ultrasound to Deliver Chemotherapy to the Brain

2023-05-09 07:19:04

Our brain is a fortress protected by a physical and metabolic barrier called the “blood-brain barrier”. It has the advantage of making the brain almost hermetic to the penetration of toxic substances or micro-organisms which can circulate in the blood. But this is a drawback when it comes to bringing medicine there.

The use of ultrasound to better penetrate chemotherapies into the brain

To make the cerebral blood vessels that constitute this barrier porous, a strategy using pulsed ultrasound has been developing for several years. It is called “SonoCloud”. Concretely, liposomes, small artificial vesicles filled with gas, are injected into the blood of patients. A device implanted in the thickness of the skull will make it possible to vibrate the liposomes, once they have reached the targeted cerebral area. This 4-minute vibration will have the effect of “opening” the blood-brain barrier for a little over an hour before it closes spontaneously. A sufficient time window to inject the chemotherapy.

Science, CQFD

58 min

A first clinical trial conducted in France had shown good tolerance and an increase in patient survival. It therefore remained to be seen whether the drugs could make their way to the brain in this new phase 1 clinical trial, this time conducted in the United States, 17 patients were treated, all of them suffering from glioblastoma, a brain cancer particularly aggressive. As a result, ultrasound can triple the concentration of anticancer drugs in the brain, which could explain the longer lifespan of patients.

Interview with Alexandre Carpentier, neurosurgeon at the Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital of the APHP. He is the co-author of this study published in

The Lancet Oncology.

MORNINGS OF CULTURE – 852 JDS /02 ITW Alexandre CARPENTIER mont viv

1 min

A new cell compartment has been discovered in fruit flies

This is also called organelles, structures that act as organs in so-called eukaryotic cells, in animals, plants, fungi, in all cells with a nucleus. The nucleus, for example, is one of them, it makes it possible to isolate the DNA from the rest of the cell. Mitochondria when they serve as an energy reserve. Plants and fungi have a vacuole that animals do not. These structures are complex and sometimes continuous, which is why we still discover them.

The Scientific Method

58 min

Scientists who publish in

Nature, report having identified in the intestine of these flies tiny reservoirs of phosphate, an essential element for life. These oval structures store phosphate in the form of lipids and release it in case of shortage. It remains to be seen whether these new organelles exist in other animals and in particular in humans.

Saudi universities accused of paying scientists for false affiliations

It’s everyday

The country who reports the case. A dozen Spanish scientists are said to have cited a Saudi university as their first academic affiliation, a way of artificially inflating their position in the highly influential Shanghai ranking.

The Journal of Science

6 min

The El Pais investigation reveals that the two oldest Saudi universities pay up to 70,000 euros for this sleight of hand. Spain is not the only country affected. A new report by the consulting firm SIRIS lists 210 scientists, from China, Germany, Turkey or even India, but Spanish academics are among the most corrupt in relative and absolute numbers. The most emblematic of these cases is that of the chemist Rafael Luque. The University of Cordoba suspended its salary last month and for the next thirteen years for citing King Saud University before it.

Locusts escape cannibalism through smells

Most of the time, migratory locusts are calm and eat little. But during the so-called gregarious phase, during the rainy season, populations increase. They then become aggressive and eat each other from behind. This would allow the swarm to maintain its direction. But if all the locusts eat each other, there are no more swarms, so there is probably a way around this cannibalism. This is the starting point of this study published in

Science.

THE

scientists identified 17 odors produced by crickets only when they are in groups and never when they are alone. And one of them seems to act as a foil, it’s an odorous substance that goes into the production of hydrogen cyanide. According to the authors, this discovery could be used to combat the damage caused by the locusts and to divert their trajectory from the crops.

Thanks to Alexandre Carpentier for his valuable explanations.