Engineering patient-specific drug delivery to the brain

About the Presentation

Many central nervous system (CNS) diseases are difficult to treat effectively with blood-based drug delivery methods because the blood-brain barrier severely restricts or entirely blocks the passage of most drugs and biologics to the CNS tissue. One way to bypass the blood-brain barrier is through drug delivery to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), a clear, colorless fluid that surrounds the entire brain and spinal cord. A wide variety of drugs can be administered directly to the CSF at much lower dosages than to the bloodstream and typically fewer side effects. Although promising, clinical use of CSF drug delivery is limited by a lack of understanding about solute transport within the CSF and absorption into the CNS tissue. To gain such understanding is challenging given that the CSF moves back-and-forth with each heartbeat through a highly complex geometry.

While computational modeling is a powerful tool with the potential to provide deep insight into CSF drug delivery, more realistic computational models of CSF drug delivery are needed. Additional complicating factors are that CSF anatomy and physiology can vary substantially in CNS disease states and with age. A key advantage of a computational model is its potential to optimize patient-specific therapies (e.g., drug properties, delivery location, and injection volume to the target tissue). This is especially important for drugs that can cost more than $1M for a single dose.