The power of sound: Focused ultrasound in brain cancer

Despite advances in oncology, cancers of the central nervous system remain among the most deadly. Unique features of the brain, such as the blood brain barrier, impose physical obstacles to therapeutic delivery, contributing to the poor prognosis of patients with these conditions. Focused ultrasound is an emerging technology that allows the non-invasive delivery of ultrasound energy to focal brain targets with great precision. This presentation will focus on current and emerging uses of focused ultrasound for brain disease, with a specific focus on the potential treatment of neuro-oncologic disease.

Learning objectives:

1. To understand the challenges that the blood brain barrier, and the brain’s anatomy can pose to the treatment of brain cancer
2. To discover the role of focused ultrasound in the treatment of brain disorders
3. To understand the role of clinical trials in the development of new therapies.

About the speaker:

Dr. Nir Lipsman is the Dan Chair of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, staff neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute.

He completed a medical degree at Queen’s University and a neurosurgical residency at the University of Toronto, during which he completed his PhD investigating the clinical and imaging correlates of neuromodulation in patients with treatment-resistant neuropsychiatric disease.

He currently holds the Harquail Family Endowed Chair as the Director of Sunnybrook’s Harquail Centre for Neuromodulation, where over the last 10 years, he has led several world-first clinical trials of MR-guided focused ultrasound (FUS), including the world’s first experience of FUS in essential tremor, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, and global-first trials of FUS-enhanced BBB opening in primary and secondary brain tumours, Alzheimer’s Disease, ALS and Parkinson’s disease.

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