Brain tumours: ultrasound makes blood vessels permeable to enhance treatment delivery

Teams from the Paris Public Hospitals (AP-HP), Pierre and Marie Curie University, Inserm and the CarThera company (which is hosted by the Brain and Spine Institute [ICM]), coordinated by Prof. Alexandre Carpentier, a neurosurgeon at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, AP-HP, have successfully used ultrasound to temporarily permeabilise blood vessels in the brains of patients affected by recurrent malignant brain tumours. This innovative method allows increased delivery of treatments, including chemotherapeutic agents, to the brain, and represents hope for other brain pathologies. Treatment of primary malignant brain tumours is currently based on a neurosurgical procedure followed by sessions of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. These treatments bring about disease remission for varying periods, depending on the patient. The blood-brain barrier (BBB), this particularly impermeable wall of vessels that limits the exposure of the neurons to toxic agents, restricts the entry and hence the delivery of treatments to the brain. Given this observation, the respective teams led by Prof. Alexandre Carpentier and Dr Ahmed Idbaih, and the neuro-oncology group from Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, AP-HP, launched a phase 1/2a clinical trial in July 2014, sponsored by AP-HP, in patients with recurrent malignant brain tumours. The objective is to permeabilise the blood-brain barrier, in order to increase the penetration and delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs to the brain, using the 'SonoCloud - ultrasound device developed by the CarThera company.