Using ultrasound to release drugs

Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have developed a noninvasive way of delivering drugs to within a few millimeters of a desired point in the brain. The method, tested in rats, uses focused ultrasound to jiggle drug molecules loose from nanoparticle “cages” that have been injected into the bloodstream.

“This important work establishes that ultrasonic drug uncaging appears to have the required precision to tune the brain’s activity via targeted drug application,” said Deisseroth, who wasn’t involved in the study. “The powerful new technique could be used to test optogenetically inspired ideas, derived initially from rodent studies, in large animals — and perhaps soon in clinical trials.”

The research results are published in this article.

Read the full article at Stanford News.