ULTRASOUND beams could make it possible to treat brain diseases with gene therapy without making a single incision.
Until now, the only attempts at targeted drug delivery and gene therapy in the brain have involved opening the skull and injecting substances into particular areas, which is risky. This is necessary because the cells lining blood vessels in the brain are tightly bound together to keep out infectious agents. This blood-brain barrier also keeps out large-molecule drugs, and the lipid particles or viruses used to carry DNA in gene therapy.
But Ferenc Jolesz and his team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital…
