2016/11/17 by Shih-Ying Wu, Carlos Sierra Sánchez, Gesthimani Samiotaki +3 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · #Ultrasound and Hyperthermia Applications #Ultrasound and Cavitation Phenomena #Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Imaging
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep37094
openalex publication_date 2016/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Focused ultrasound with microbubbles has been used to noninvasively and selectively deliver pharmacological agents across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) for treating brain diseases. Acoustic cavitation monitoring could serve as an on-line tool to assess and control the treatment. While it demonstrated a strong correlation in small animals, its translation to primates remains in question due to the anatomically different and highly heterogeneous brain structures with gray and white matteras well as dense vasculature. In addition, the drug delivery efficiency and the BBB opening volume have never been shown to be predictable through cavitation monitoring in primates. This study aimed at determining how cavitation activity is correlated with the amount and concentration of gadolinium delivered through the BBB and its associated delivery efficiency as well as the BBB opening volume in non-human primates. Another important finding entails the effect of heterogeneous brain anatomy and vasculature of a primate brain, i.e., presence of large cerebral vessels, gray and white matter that will also affect the cavitation activity associated with variation of BBB opening in different tissue types, which is not typically observed in small animals. Both these new findings are critical in the primate brain and provide essential information for clinical applications.