WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Team First to Use Ultrasound to Treat Alzheimer's

Brain experts at West Virginia University's (WVU) Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute have made a historic breakthrough with an Alzheimer's treatment that uses focused ultrasound, reports WVNews . In collaboration with Israeli medical technology company INSIGHTEC, WVU held the first American trials of the method, in which ultrasound waves were beamed through a specialized helmet with more than 1,000 probes targeting a precise spot in the brain, paired with microscopic bubbles. Imposing a different frequency on the bubbles caused them to osculate, opening up the brain-blood barrier. "It's protected on one end for us to function but also prevents larger molecules or chemotherapy or medications or antibodies or immune system cells or amino therapy or stem cells to get in," says WVU's Ali R. Rezai. The WVU team targeted the hippocampus and the memory and cognitive regions of the brain, which are affected by plaque clusters found in people with Alzheimer's. The trial's initial recipient was West Virginia healthcare worker and former WVU Children's Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse Judi Polak, who was first diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's five years ago. The three-hour-long procedure safely and successfully opened her blood-brain barrier for an unprecedented 36 hours. The researchers say the potential benefits of the first and subsequent treatments will take several years to fully assess.