2023-09-20 04:00:05
A new type of brain implant has just been tested for the first time. This one, the size of a grain of rice, is capable of testing around twenty different drugs at the same time in the patient’s brain tumors, in order to compare their effectiveness and ultimately be able to quickly administer a suitable treatment. .
The implant in question was invented by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to act directly on gliomas, the most common brain tumors, particularly in children, but also the most fatal. In general, these tumors are treated by combining surgical interventions to eliminate as much of the tumor as possible, and treatments aimed at killing cells not affected by surgery (Surgery is a medical technique consisting of physical intervention on the. ..). However, it is still difficult for doctors to identify which treatment will be effective on each patient. However, in view of the aggressiveness of gliomas, time is often relied upon to find an effective solution.
The recently invented device is called an “intratumoral microdevice”: it is an implant that can be inserted into a tumor during a surgical procedure. The latter is then capable of administering, during the operation, up to 20 drugs to different areas of the tumor. During this same procedure, the doctor then removes this implant as well as a portion of tumor tissue, in order to be able to analyze it.
During laboratory analysis, scientists can then look for possible drug damage in each part of the sampled tissue, whether this is DNA damage or signs of cell death. This is how they can conclude which drug was most effective once morest cancer. Cancer is a disease characterized by abnormal cell proliferation… ) of the patient.
In other words, this technology makes it possible to significantly speed up the testing of the patient’s reaction to different treatments, and thus find the one that is most effective for them. By thus accelerating the identification and monitoring of the appropriate treatment, this system might promise better chances of cure.
Tested on only three patients for the moment, the implant has succeeded in providing information that is perfectly consistent with the proven effectiveness of the drugs on them. This device also has another advantage: its simplicity means that the cost of the surgical procedure is not increased too significantly. Larger trials will still be necessary, but these first results are encouraging, especially in the face of this scourge which requires ever more medicine (Medicine (from the Latin medicus, “which heals”) is the science and… ) personalized.
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