Houston Methodist researchers have discovered a more accurate and timely way to deliver life-saving drug therapies to the brain, laying the groundwork for more effective treatment of brain tumors and other neurological diseases. In a study published this month in Communications Biology , an open access journal from Nature Portfolio, investigators used an electric field to infuse medicine from a reservoir outside the brain to specific targets inside the brain. This adds a new dimension to the 30-year-old process of injecting therapeutics into the brain through convection-enhanced delivery (CED), which uses continuous pressure over time to inject a fluid containing therapeutics into the brain.
Because CED follows the path of least resistance, therapeutics don't always hit the target. Introducing an electrical field to the process – called electrokinetic convection-enhanced delivery or ECED – gives surgeons the power to design the delivery path and potentially cover brain lesions and tumors better. Delivering therapeutics by way of ECED has many applications.
It has the potential to improve gene therapy and tumor treatment, as well as treatment for traumatic brain injury and degenerative diseases – any number of situations where we need to get vital treatments to the brain in a more targeted manner." Dr. Amir Faraji, principal investigator and Houston Methodist neurosurgeon Delivering the correct dosage of drugs to the right place in the brain has long been a challenge.
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