Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's cure: new form of treatment could help cure brain-related diseases, scientists discover

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A recent scientific breakthrough is bringing new hope for people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other brain-related disease. Scientists from the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Canada have found a way to finally penetrate our brains' natural protective covering, which has been acting as an impediment to medical treatment for years.

The human brain has protective barrier made up of a cell layer that surrounds the blood vessels in the organ to help ward off infection, but has also made it inaccessible for the drugs administered by doctors for chemotherapy on brain tumors.

The Canadian researchers were now able to get through the layer with the use of micro gas-filled bubbles and ultrasound waves. This development, which could now allow doctors to tap into the previously out-of-reach areas of the brain, could help not just in the brain cancer treatment, but also for the advance treatment of brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and even some psychiatric conditions, according to a news release from Sunnybrook.

"The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been a persistent obstacle to delivering valuable therapies to treat disease such as tumours," according to the study's lead investigator, Dr. Todd Mainprize, principal investigator of the study and Neurosurgeon in the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor at University of Toronto.

"We are encouraged that we were able to temporarily open this barrier in a patient to deliver chemotherapy directly to the brain tumour." Mainprize added that this will open up new opportunities to deliver potentially much more effective treatments to the targeted areas of the brain.

The research team first injected a chemotherapy drug, into the bloodstream of Bonny Hall, a patient with a malignant brain tumour and the first person to ever undergo of the procedure, wrote Independent. Then, the micro bubbles were also injected, followed by the use of an MRI-guided low-intensity ultrasound waves that aim to cause vibration of the bubbles, which in turn leads to the BBB opening up and the chemotherapy flowing through the targeted regions.

The tumor and some of the surrounding tissues found inside Hall's brain were then removed via surgery to find out how much of the chemotherapy were able to break through. Prior to the research, only 25 percent of the chemotherapy drugs are reaching the brain. And, doctors are now hoping that the trial on Hall's case will be a success.

This study is funded by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation with the help from other government agencies and foundations in Canada.