Focused ultrasound for the treatment of glioblastoma

Abstract

Purpose Six years ago, in 2015, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation sponsored a workshop to discuss, and subsequently transition the landscape, of focused ultrasound as a new therapy for treating glioblastoma. Methods This year, in 2021, a second workshop was held to review progress made in the field. Discussion topics included blood–brain barrier opening, thermal and nonthermal tumor ablation, immunotherapy, sonodynamic therapy, and desired focused ultrasound device improvements. Results The outcome of the 2021 workshop was the creation of a new roadmap to address knowledge gaps and reduce the time it takes for focused ultrasound to become part of the treatment armamentarium and reach clinical adoption for the treatment of patients with glioblastoma. Priority projects identified in the roadmap include determining a well-defined algorithm to confirm and quantify drug delivery following blood–brain barrier opening, identifying a focused ultrasound-specific microbubble, exploring the role of focused ultrasound for liquid biopsy in glioblastoma, and making device modifications that better support clinical needs. Conclusion This article reviews the key preclinical and clinical updates from the workshop, outlines next steps to research, and provides relevant references for focused ultrasound in the treatment of glioblastoma.

Mapping knowledge landscapes and emerging trends of sonodynamic therapy: A bibliometric and visualized study

“…And these keywords with an ongoing burst until now deserve special attention because they may have great potential to continue to be hot topics in the near future ( Wu et al, 2021a ). Taken together with keywords co-occurrence and burst analysis, with the exception of nanomaterials-related studies including nanoparticles, mesoporous silica nanoparticles, nanosheets, liposomes, microbubble and TiO 2 nanoparticle, the following research directions such as immunogenic cell death ( Zheng et al, 2021 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ), metal-organic framework ( Pan et al, 2018b ), photothermal therapy ( Liang et al, 2019 ), hypoxia ( Chen et al, 2017 ; Zhu et al, 2018 ), tumor microenvironment ( An et al, 2020 ), chemodynamic therapy ( Bai et al, 2020 ), combination therapy ( Ning et al, 2022 ), tumor resistance ( Guan et al, 2022 ), intensity focused ultrasound ( Ohmura et al, 2011 ; Roberts et al, 2022 ), drug delivery ( Ren et al, 2022 ), and Staphylococcus aureus ( Yu et al, 2021 ) also deserve further attention and may continue to explode in the future. Given space limitations, we only discussed several directions such as immunogenic cell death (ICD), hypoxia and Staphylococcus aureus as follows.…”

Regulation of P-glycoprotein and Breast Cancer Resistance Protein Expression Induced by Focused Ultrasound-Mediated Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption: A Pilot Study

“…Here we set out to understand the acute and very focal effects of FUS application targeted to a single point in the brain (i.e., a protocol typically found in clinical applications [ 26 , 31 ]). The limited brain volume (2 × 2 × 6 mm 3 ) exposed to the same acoustic energy did not allow us to assess P-gp and BCRP expression using immunohistochemistry in conjunction with Western blotting.…”

Past, present and future of Focused Ultrasound as an adjunct or complement to DIPG/DMG therapy: A consensus of the 2021 FUSF DIPG meeting

“…Post contrast MR images can be performed after the procedure to ensure BBBO in the target area. This device is currently being used in multiple adult clinical trials of BBBO for Glioblastoma [47] . This same machine, with slightly different technical parameters, is being used for sonodynamic therapy in patients with DMG (NCT05123534) as the FUS beam will activate a sonosensitizer, 5-ALA, which selectively accumulates in brain tumors, to produce free oxygen radicals causing cell death in vivo.…”