Now if we just had a strategy to identify candidate drugs for this. Ask
your neurologist whom the hell needs to be contacted to identify drugs
for this purpose. If your neurologist doesn't know that call the
hospital president and have that person relieved of duty for not knowing
how to practice medicine. If WE don't start taking a hard line with our stroke medical staff they will never fix any of the problems in stroke.
Heads need to start rolling. Ranting in full force today, the president
of the WSO really needs to justify the incompetency of that
organization.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=151118&CultureCode=en
Magnetic nanoparticles can open the blood-brain barrier and deliver
molecules directly to the brain, say researchers from the University of
Montreal, Polytechnique Montréal, and CHU Sainte-Justine. This barrier
runs inside almost all vessels in the brain and protects it from
elements circulating in the blood that may be toxic to the brain. The
research is important as currently 98% of therapeutic molecules are also
unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. “The barrier is temporary
opened at a desired location for approximately 2 hours by a small
elevation of the temperature generated by the nanoparticles when exposed
to a radio-frequency field,” explained first author and co-inventor
Seyed Nasrollah Tabatabaei. “Our tests revealed that this technique is
not associated with any inflammation of the brain. This new result could
lead to a breakthrough in the way nanoparticles are used in the
treatment and diagnosis of brain diseases,” explained the
co-investigator, Hélène Girouard. “At the present time, surgery is the
only way to treat patients with brain disorders. Moreover, while
surgeons are able to operate to remove certain kinds of tumors, some
disorders are located in the brain stem, amongst nerves, making surgery
impossible,” added collaborator and senior author Anne-Sophie Carret.
Although the technology was developed using murine models and has not
yet been tested in humans, the researchers are confident that future
research will enable its use in people. “Building on earlier findings
and drawing on the global effort of an interdisciplinary team of
researchers, this technology proposes a modern version of the vision
described almost 40 years ago in the movie Fantastic Voyage, where a
miniature submarine navigated in the vascular network to reach a
specific region of the brain,” said principal investigator Sylvain
Martel. In earlier research, Martel and his team had managed to
manipulate the movement of nanoparticles through the body using the
magnetic forces generated by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.
To open the blood-brain barrier, the magnetic nanoparticles are sent
to the surface of the blood-brain barrier at a desired location in the
brain. Although it was not the technique used in this study, the
placement could be achieved by using the MRI technology described above.
Then, the researchers generated a radio-frequency field. The
nanoparticles reacted to the radio-frequency field by dissipating heat
thereby creating a mechanical stress on the barrier. This allows a
temporary and localized opening of the barrier for diffusion of
therapeutics into the brain.
The technique is unique in many ways. “The result is quite
significant since we showed in previous experiments that the same
nanoparticles can also be used to navigate therapeutic agents in the
vascular network using a clinical MRI scanner,” Martel remarked.
“Linking the navigation capability with these new results would allow
therapeutics to be delivered directly to a specific site of the brain,
potentially improving significantly the efficacy of the treatment while
avoiding systemic circulation of toxic agents that affect healthy
tissues and organs,” Carret added. “While other techniques have been
developed for delivering drugs to the blood-brain barrier, they either
open it too wide, exposing the brain to great risks, or they are not
precise enough, leading to scattering of the drugs and possible unwanted
side effect,” Martel said.
Although there are many hurdles to overcome before the technology can
be used to treat humans, the research team is optimistic. “Although our
current results are only proof of concept, we are on the way to
achieving our goal of developing a local drug delivery mechanism that
will be able to treat oncologic, psychiatric, neurological and
neurodegenerative disorders, amongst others,” Carret concluded.
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