Project

"Breaking Barriers” in Glioblastoma Treatment: Focused Ultrasound to improve the efficacy of Targeted Radioligand Therapy

Code
bof/baf/4y/2024/01/213
Duration
01 January 2024 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Medical and health sciences
    • Radiation therapy
    • Cancer therapy
  • Engineering and technology
    • Biomedical image processing
    • Biomedical instrumentation
Keywords
Focused Ultrasound Brain tumor longitudinal analysis Radionuclide therapy Brain Imaging Animal model
 
Project description

Standard of care of glioblastoma (GBM) consists of debulking surgery followed by radiotherapy and concurrent and adjuvant chemotherapy. Although this multimodal approach can extend survival, recurrence is almost inevitable. The challenge of treating GBM mainly arises from a small population of therapy-resistant cells and the complex inter- and intra-tumour heterogeneity. Given these challenges, pharmacological therapy has shown increasing interest, where various forms of targeted therapy have been explored. However, the impermeable nature of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) limits diffusion of those therapeutics from the blood into the brain. Focused ultrasound (FUS) is a novel emerging technology offering the possibility of temporary opening the BBB, hereby providing possibilities to overcome the BBB and deliver drugs directly to the tumour site. In this project, we aim to investigate the combination of FUS and targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy as a novel therapeutic approach for GBM.