Stanford researchers have shown in rats that pharmacologically active amounts of a fast-acting anesthetic drug could be released from nanoparticle "cages" in small, specified brain areas at which the scientists had aimed a beam of focused ultrasound. In principle, the same approach could work for many drugs with widely differing pharmacological actions and psychiatric applications, and even for some chemotherapeutic drugs used to combat cancer.
Nanoparticle ‘cage’ allows for safe, noninvasive, precise drug delivery in the brain
Stanford researchers have shown in rats that pharmacologically active amounts of a fast-acting anesthetic drug could be released from nanoparticle "cages" in small, specified brain areas at which the scientists had aimed a beam of focused ultrasound. In principle, the same approach could work for many drugs with widely differing pharmacological actions and psychiatric applications, and even for some chemotherapeutic drugs used to combat cancer.
