# Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in Primary Brain Tumors with Non-invasive MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound: A Clinical Safety and Feasibility Study

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-mainprize-sci-rep/  
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## TL;DR

Paper cited by two technology pages, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 30674905 and published in Scientific reports; the citing pages link this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has long limited therapeutic access to brain tumor and peritumoral tissue. In animals, MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) with intravenously injected microbubbles can temporarily and repeatedly disrupt the BBB in a targeted fashion, without open surgery. Our objective is to demonstrate safety and feasibility of MRgFUS BBB opening with systemically administered chemotherapy in patients with glioma in a phase I, single-arm, open-label study. Five patients with previously confirmed or suspected high-grade glioma based on imaging underwent the MRgFUS in conjunction with administration of chemotherapy (n = 1 liposomal doxorubicin, n = 4 temozolomide) one day prior to their scheduled surgical resection. Samples of "sonicated" and "unsonicated" tissue were measured for the chemotherapy by liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry. Complete follow-up was three months. The procedure was well-tolerated, with no adverse clinical or radiologic events related to the procedure. The BBB within the target volume showed radiographic evidence of opening with an immediate 15-50% increased contrast enhancement on T1-weighted MRI, and resolution approximately 20 hours after. Biochemical analysis of sonicated versus unsonicated tissue suggest chemotherapy delivery is feasible. In this study, we demonstrated transient BBB opening in tumor and peritumor tissue using non-invasive low-intensity MRgFUS with systemically administered chemotherapy was safe and feasible. The characterization of therapeutic delivery and clinical response to this treatment paradigm requires further investigation.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 30674905 (DOI 10.1038/s41598-018-36340-0). Matched by DOI alone: two technology pages cite this DOI among their external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Scientific reports
- Year: 2019
- DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36340-0
- Authors: Mainprize T, Lipsman N, Huang Y, et al.
- What it means: Two technology pages on OnCo cite this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing pages listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Sci Rep 2019: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36340-0
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30674905/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/30674905

## Connected records

- technologies: [Focused-ultrasound blood-brain barrier opening](https://onco.cc/technologies/bbb-focused-ultrasound/), [Transcranial focused ultrasound systems (Exablate Neuro, SonoCloud)](https://onco.cc/technologies/transcranial-focused-ultrasound-systems/)

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