Recent Advances on Ultrasound Contrast Agents for Blood-Brain Barrier Opening with Focused Ultrasound

Ambre Dauba (1) , Anthony Delalande (2) , Hermes Kamimura (3) , Allegra Conti (4) , Benoit Larrat (5) , Nicolas Tsapis (6) , Novell Anthony (1)

1 BIOMAPS - LaBoratoire d'Imagerie biOmédicale MultimodAle Paris-Saclay
2 CBM - Centre de biophysique moléculaire
3 Columbia University [New York]
4 University of Rome Tor Vergata
5 BAOBAB - Building large instruments for neuroimaging: from population imaging to ultra-high magnetic fields
6 IGPS - Institut Galien Paris-Saclay

The blood-brain barrier is the primary obstacle to efficient intracerebral drug delivery. Focused ultrasound, in conjunction with microbubbles, is a targeted and non-invasive way to disrupt the blood-brain barrier. Many commercially available ultrasound contrast agents and agents specifically designed for therapeutic purposes have been investigated in ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening studies. The new generation of sono-sensitive agents, such as liquid-core droplets, can also potentially disrupt the blood-brain barrier after their ultrasound-induced vaporization. In this review, we describe the different compositions of agents used for ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening in recent studies, and we discuss the challenges of the past five years related to the optimal formulation of agents.

Mots clés: blood-brain barrier; bubble; droplet; phase-change contrast agent; ultrasound

Domaines: Chimie thérapeutique

Ambre Dauba, Anthony Delalande, Hermes Kamimura, Allegra Conti, Benoit Larrat, et al.. Recent Advances on Ultrasound Contrast Agents for Blood-Brain Barrier Opening with Focused Ultrasound. Pharmaceutics, 2020, 12 (11), pp.1125. ⟨10.3390/pharmaceutics12111125⟩. ⟨hal-03024904⟩