{"id":16398,"date":"2022-09-13T20:31:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T18:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cienciagandia.webs.upv.es\/?p=16398"},"modified":"2022-09-14T09:30:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T07:30:53","slug":"3d-acoustic-holograms-to-treat-nervous-system-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cienciagandia.webs.upv.es\/en\/2022\/09\/3d-acoustic-holograms-to-treat-nervous-system-diseases\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Acoustic Holograms for Treating Nervous System Diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team from the Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Val\u00e8ncia (UPV)<\/a>, the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC, for its Spanish initials) and Columbia University (USA) has created 3D-printed acoustic holograms (whose feasibility was demonstrated in an animal model) to improve the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, among others.<\/p>\n

This project graced the cover of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering magazine.<\/p>\n

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The holograms devised by the UPV and CSIC research team temporally and locally opens the blood-brain in a selective, efficient and highly targeted way, allowing drug delivery<\/strong> to treat pathologies that affect the central nervous system.<\/p>\n

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According to Francisco Camarena<\/a>, research professor at Campus Gandia, transcranial focused ultrasound has shown great potential for treating neurological diseases<\/strong> thanks to its ability to generate therapeutic effects with precision and in a non-invasive way. “However, applying them to the structures of the central nervous system is complicated, due to two major drawbacks: the effects of aberration and attenuation introduced by the skull bones and the complex and extensive spatial distribution of the deep structures of the brain,” Camarena points out.<\/p>\n

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The acoustic holograms devised by researchers from the UPV and the CSIC allow a more targeted opening of the blood-brain barrier<\/strong> than by just using ultrasound exclusively and, what is more important, they can correct these aberrations introduced by the skull. Simultaneously they can generate a multifocal ultrasound beam on specially relevant brain structures.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThanks to our holograms, the ultrasound beam can be targeted and adapted bilaterally and very precisely on parts of the brain that are of great therapeutic interest, such as, for example, on the two nuclei that make up the hippocampus, related to Alzheimer’s disease, and that has a whimsical three-dimensional shape,\u201d adds No\u00e9 Jim\u00e9nez<\/a>, Ram\u00f3n y Cajal researcher at the UPV.<\/p>\n

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This is the first time that blood-brain barrier opening has been achieved simultaneously in both hemispheres. In addition, the UPV-CSIC-Columbia University team has achieved this with a much higher resolution than the standard, which allows a better targeting of the area to be treated, minimizing the volume of healthy brain tissue that would be sonified, while simultaneously reducing the cost and time of intervention.
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