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Virginia Tech receives recognition for pioneering focused ultrasound research
By Emily Schabacker,
2 days ago
Virginia Tech was recently named a center of excellence for its focused ultrasound program, making it the sixth recognized center in the United States. The designation opens up opportunities for research collaborations with other centers around the world and could lead to increased funding opportunities.
Focused ultrasound is being researched as a noninvasive medical treatment for about 170 different medical conditions. The technology uses highly focused sound waves to target specific areas of tissue within the body, allowing for precise treatment of conditions such as tumors and neurological disorders.
It has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and insurance companies to treat a neurological condition called essential tremor, which causes involuntary shaking during movement. Guided by MRI imaging, focused ultrasound waves can be directed to destroy a very small area of the brain where abnormal activity is causing the tremors.
Focused ultrasound could be used to treat conditions such as substance use disorder, chronic pain and other neurodegenerative diseases, but much of the research is still in the early stages.
Michael Friedlander will serve as chairman of the new center of excellence program at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke. He is vice president of Virginia Tech’s health sciences and technology department and is the executive director of the research institute.
“We bring to the table not only excellence, good people, great facilities, a great university and so forth — we bring approaches that aren’t as well represented in the consortia of focused ultrasound. … So it’s something new we bring to the table, not just more of the same,” Friedlander said.
The university has many research pursuits in focused ultrasound and is the only center using this technology in veterinary medicine. Joanne Touhy, a co-director of the program, is researching the use of focused ultrasound to treat cancer in dogs.
Dogs can develop about 20 of the same cancers humans do, Friedlander said. For example, glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, is the same in dogs as in humans, so what works on a dog is likely to work on a human, too.
“[The dogs] are treated like patients. If their owners want them to, they can join in a clinical trial to try a new, better type of therapy for them to see if it can help,” Friedlander said.
The largest area of research at the institute right now is on brain cancers in children, adults and dogs.
Such cancers are hard to treat because the brain is surrounded by a tightly connected group of cells called the blood brain barrier that shields the brain from various substances in the bloodstream. While this barrier safeguards the brain, it also presents a challenge in delivering drugs that treat the tumors, Friedlander said.
Virginia Tech’s research group is exploring ways to use low-intensity focused ultrasound to make the cells move apart slightly, allowing drugs to be delivered to the brain.
Through Virginia Tech’s partnership with Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., an institute researcher is collaborating with doctors at the hospital to apply the new technology in the treatment of serious pediatric brain cancers.
“It’s a very hot area of research at the moment. It’s very exciting,” Friedlander said.
The recognition was awarded by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, a nonprofit organization based at the University of Virginia.
There are just 12 focused ultrasound centers of excellence around the world.
Virginia Tech’s focused ultrasound team has had a relationship with the Focused Ultrasound Foundation for nearly a decade. About three years ago, Virginia Tech joined a research consortium that allowed it to receive state funds that support focused ultrasound research.
Then, about two years ago, leadership at the foundation encouraged Virginia Tech to put in a formal application for its center of excellence designation. It took about a year to pull together all the information and identify leadership, Friedlander said.
Jenny Munson with FBRI is a co-director of the focused ultrasound program and studies brain cancer treatments. Biomedical engineer Eli Vlaisavljevich, based in Blacksburg, develops new focused ultrasound machines and is also a co-director.
To be considered for the recognition, Virginia Tech had to show that it had all the necessary infrastructure, including multiple focused ultrasound systems and MRIs.
“We had to have a plan in place to show how we would run the center, how we would make sure the resources are made available to lots of people,” Frielander said. “We had to have a communications plan for the center. We had to have a plan for how we were going to do outreach and collaborate with other centers. And we had to show them projects and ideas and things we are doing.”
The designation opens up opportunities to collaborate with other centers of excellence and to compete for certain grants. It’s also a good way to bring visibility to Virginia Tech, Friedlander said.
“There’s a certain skepticism people have, you know, how can it do so many things?” he said. “Well, if the answer is, it’s simply energy, and when energy comes in contact with living systems, biological systems, it interacts. And so it really shouldn’t be a surprise that you can do so many different things with it.”
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