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Health

Bubbles in blood open the brain for world-first cancer treatment

By Clare Wilson

13 October 2021

MRI images — Arrows on MRI images show tumours before the treatment (left) and after (right)
SUNNYBROOK HEALTH SCIENCES CENTRE

Doctors have shown that it is possible to safely deliver medicines directly to a person’s brain, in a world-first cancer treatment that involves breaching the “blood-brain barrier”.

The method involves temporarily making blood vessels in a certain brain region more porous, to let a drug flow out of the bloodstream and reach tumour cells.

Four women with breast cancer that had spread to the brain have had their tumours shrunk by a drug called Herceptin using this method.

Blood vessels in the brain…

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