New Research Suggests Focused Ultrasound Could Improve Brain Tumor Gene Therapy

Spring 2020

A collaborative research team led by Rich Price, PhD, at the University of Virginia and Justin Hanes, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University has published new, and somewhat unexpected, results from their preclinical nanoparticle gene delivery work.

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Blood-brain barrier vs. focused ultrasound with MRI guidance

Spring 2020

Researchers at the University of Virginia are exploring ways to break through the blood-brain barrier using MRI-guided focused ultrasound.

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New technique could revolutionize treatment for Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, brain tumors

Spring 2020

The approach, the researchers hope, could revolutionize treatment for conditions from Alzheimer’s to epilepsy to brain tumors – and even help repair the devastating damage caused by stroke.

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Focused Ultrasound Could Let Drugs Bypass the Blood-Brain Barrier

Spring 2020

Richard J. Price, PhD, of UVA’s School of Medicine and School of Engineering, is using focused soundwaves to overcome the natural “blood-brain barrier,” which protects the brain from harmful pathogens. His approach aims to breach the barrier only where needed, and only when needed, and then deliver treatments in exquisitely precise fashion.

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Focused Ultrasound Opening Brain to Impossible Treatments

Spring 2020

University of Virginia researchers are pioneering the use of focused ultrasound to defy the brain’s protective barrier so that doctors could, at last, deliver many treatments directly into the brain to battle neurological diseases. The approach, the researchers hope, could revolutionize treatment for conditions from Alzheimer’s to epilepsy to brain tumors – and even help repair the devastating damage caused by stroke.

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Breaking the Ultrasound Barrier to Fight Disease

Spring 2019

“Because focused ultrasound has such a powerful combination of features — it’s an entirely unique and minimally invasive tool that can trigger a variety of responses in the body — it has tremendous potential for treating a host of medical problems,” says Richard Price, PhD, who is research director at the University of Virginia Focused Ultrasound Center. “There are probably many applications for focused ultrasound that we haven’t even begun to contemplate yet.”

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Riding a Wave of Sound

Spring 2019

One way to get drugs through the blood-brain barrier: smuggle them across using sound waves.

Focused ultrasound opens the blood-brain barrier

Fall 2018

An early-stage, non-invasive therapy, focused ultrasound works by focusing multiple beams of ultrasound onto targets deep within the body with a high degree of accuracy. In doing so, the focused sonic energy can destroy targeted cells while sparing adjacent normal tissue. But that’s not all it can do – as well as ablating tumours or other disease targets, focused ultrasound can be used to stimulate an immune response, open the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and much more.

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Tackling Cancer Through Team Science

Fall 2017

For patients suffering from metastatic breast cancer, where the disease has spread throughout the body, the survival rate is only 22%. These women and men face ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives, often with harsh side effects. Although treatable, there is no cure for metastatic disease.

The University of Virginia Health System is working to change that, and has launched a clinical trial that uses groundbreaking focused ultrasound technology to target metastatic breast cancer and make tumors responsive to immunotherapy—without surgery.

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Investigator Profile: Richard Price, PhD

October 17, 2017.

Can focused ultrasound be used as a tool to allow therapeutic agents to reach deadly brain tumors? Is it possible to stop the progression and spread of breast cancer? If Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed early, could its effect on the brain be reversed? These questions and more are being tackled by scientists in the Price Laboratory at the University of Virginia’s Biomedical Engineering Department.

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