Ilan Epstein

The blood-brain barrier is composed of a layer of cells separating the brain from the bloodstream. It is highly selective with what it lets through, as its main function is to filter out toxins and viruses from entering the brain. However, cancerous cells can go through the blood-brain barrier and into the brain, which is dangerous for cancer patients and also poses a challenge for treatment. While radiation therapy can extend the lifespan of a patient by a few months, surgery is often too dangerous, and conventional chemotherapy treatments are unsuccessful due to the blood-brain barrier not allowing many times of chemotherapy drugs to enter the brain. 

However, the use of focused ultrasound can create small, non-permanent openings in the blood-brain barrier. A focused ultrasound utilizes beams of acoustic energy to vibrate a specific area near the blood-brain barrier, and when microbubbles injected into the bloodstream pass through it, they begin to oscillate rapidly. This will disrupt precise areas of blood-brain barrier tissue and create small holes. Injected drugs are then able to enter the brain through the holes, enabling the possibility of chemotherapy.