Konofagou Investigates Blood-Brain Barrier
10/23/2008
Assistant Professor Elisa Konofagou of the Department of Biomedical Engineering has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health that may pave the way to finding effective methods of delivering drug treatments to the millions of men and women who suffer from Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. "Although great progress has been made in understanding these diseases," says Konofagou, "there are few effective treatments and no cures currently available, primarily because there is no way to deliver drugs from the bloodstream into the brain, the so-called ‘blood-brain barrier'."
"My research focus will be on creating a way for a safe and localized opening of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to facilitate brain drug delivery," she says. "I have found that Focused Ultrasound (FUS), in conjunction with microbubbles, is currently the only technique that can induce localized BBB opening entirely noninvasively (i.e., through intact skin and skull) and regionally (e.g., the hippocampus)."
Through control over the ultrasound and microbubble parameters, Konofagou expects to predict and manipulate the extent and reversibility of the BBB opening induced by focused ultrasound. She will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) and fluorescence brain imaging to determine the optimal conditions for opening the blood-brain barrier and selectively and precisely deliver molecular tracers and pharmacological agents to currently untreatable brain regions.
Read more about Konofagou's Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory.