How We've Succeeded In Breaching The Blood-Brain Barrier At Last
Video of World first: scientists open blood-brain barrier non-invasively Last week, a team of Canadian doctors tried an experimental new procedure on a patient in dire straits. Bonny Hall has a brain tumor that she had been managing for years with medication, but it was growing. Her doctors decided to try a new technique in which powerful anti-cancer drugs could burst through the blood-brain barrier and attack the tumor—the first time such a procedure has been done in a human, though researchers have been trying to do it for years. Just how big a deal is this, and why hasn’t it happened before? The blood-brain barrier is made of a thin layer of cells tightly fitted together around blood vessels in the brain. The cells separate the blood in the rest of your body from the blood in your brain. While the rest of your body...