This week on BioTech Nation, Dr. Neal Kassell, founder of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, introduces us to a powerful, non-invasive technology that’s already changing lives, and it doesn’t involve surgery, injections, or pills.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Moira Gunn (00:11):
Quick. What is being studied for a diverse
range of conditions in numerousclinical trials around the world
and actually approved for sometreatments? It isn't a pill. It
isn't an injection. It's beenaround for quite some time, and
it's also readily available.
Doctor. Neal Kassell is thefounder and chair of the Focused
(00:33):
Ultrasound Foundation. He joinsme to talk about what Focused
Ultrasound is and the many waysin which it is being used today.
Doctor Kissell, welcome back tothe program.
Dr. Neal Kassell (00:45):
It's a pleasure to be with you again,
Moira.
Dr. Moira Gunn (00:48):
Now the first thing I wanna say to listeners
is that you may never have heardof focused ultrasound before,
but it is being researched allover the world. There are nearly
a thousand commercial treatmentsites where you can get
treatment all over the world.Hundreds of scientific papers
are being produced and it's inuse at major university research
(01:09):
hospitals that you know of and,many companies in this space,
numerous regulatory approvals,numerous clinical trials
underway for a variety ofpotential applications. It may
be new to you if it is new, butthis is by no means new. Still,
I was hoping, doctor Cassell,since there are those who have
(01:30):
not heard of it, what is focusedultrasound, and what does it do
when it comes into contact withthe human body?
Dr. Neal Kassell (01:38):
So focused ultrasound is an early stage,
highly disruptive,revolutionary, totally non
invasive therapeutic technologythat holds the promise to
transform a whole variety ofserious medical disorders. And
(01:59):
it's rapidly growing. Ten yearsago there were only three
medical disorders in variousstages of research and
development andcommercialization. Today there
are more than 180. So the wayfocused ultrasound works is
analogous to using a magnifyingglass to focus beams of light on
(02:21):
a point and burn a hole in aleaf.
But with focused ultrasound,instead of an optical lens
focusing beams of light on apoint to burn a hole in a leaf,
we use an acoustic lens to focusmultiple beams of ultrasound
energy on targets deep in thebody with a high degree of
(02:45):
precision and accuracy sparingthe adjacent normal tissue. So
where each of these individualbeams goes through the tissue,
it has absolutely no effectbecause it only has the power of
diagnostic ultrasound. But atthat focal point where the beams
converge, we now understand morethan 30 ways in which ultrasound
(03:10):
can affect tissue. Ten yearsago, we only understood five.
And this includes destroyingtissue by a variety of
mechanisms, delivering drugs andother therapeutic agents in
extremely high concentrations,higher concentrations that can
be achieved by the normal routesof administration, which
(03:32):
improves the efficacy anddecreases the systemic toxicity.
It could be used to enhancecancer immunotherapy drugs and
so on. The fact that there areso many different mechanisms of
action is what creates theopportunity to treat this large
(03:54):
number of serious medicaldisorders. In contrast to for
instance radiation therapy,which only has one mechanism of
action or a surgical robot,which only has one mechanism of
action. And the point in thebody where the ultrasound is
focused is guided and controlledby medical imaging, either MR
(04:17):
imaging or ultrasound imaging.
Dr. Moira Gunn (04:19):
So if I understand this correctly, if
there was just a single beam,not multiple beams, but a single
beam, it would go through me.Nothing really would happen. But
if you put them all together,focused at a very tiny point,
then we see activity.
Dr. Neal Kassell (04:37):
We see many ways in which it can affect
tissue. It's a whole new way ofdelivering drugs and other
therapeutic agents more safelyand effectively. It's an
amazing, amazing new technology.
Dr. Moira Gunn (04:50):
Now I think everybody can understand how it
could go down to the cellularlevel and destroy cells we don't
want, but it's a little moredifficult to understand how it
could deliver drugs. How wouldthat work?
Dr. Neal Kassell (05:03):
Well there's a large number of ways in which
focused ultrasound can be usedto deliver drugs and other
therapeutic agents. I'll giveyou an example in the most
simple sense. You can usemicrobubbles, which are hollow
lipid spheres, approximately atenth of a diameter of a red
(05:26):
blood cell. And thesemicrobubbles can be loaded up
with drugs, chemotherapy agentsfor cancer, genes or growth
factors for Alzheimer's orParkinson's disease, or ALS or
Huntington's disease. Andmillions and millions of these
microbubbles with the druginside are injected
(05:47):
intravenously and they circulatethroughout the body.
Wherever the blood goes, themicrobubbles go to every tissue
and every organ. But the drug istotally inactive because it's
trapped in the microbubbleexcept at the point where the
ultrasound is focused. And atthat point, and that point only,
(06:08):
the micro bubbles burst andrelease their pharmacological
payload.
Dr. Moira Gunn (06:13):
Well, when we think about taking, whether it's
pills, IV drugs, any of this, weknow they go all over our
system. And in fact, that'swhere many of the side effects
come because we have this drugin the entire system. But you're
saying, well, we could send itto you. It'll go all over the
system, but it's only going toburst. It only gets delivered
(06:35):
where we direct the focusedultrasound.
Dr. Neal Kassell (06:38):
Exactly.
Dr. Moira Gunn (06:39):
Now, while this is worldwide and, there, there
are many clinical trials thathave happened successfully, many
underway now. What conditionstoday have been approved in The
United States for the focusedultrasound?
Dr. Neal Kassell (06:54):
In The United States, there are nine clinical
indications that have beenapproved. Around the world it's
31. And this includes prostatecancer, benign prostatic
hypertrophy, essential tremor,Parkinson's tremor, Parkinson's
disease, pain from bonemetastasis, uterine fibroids,
(07:16):
and so on.
Dr. Moira Gunn (07:17):
I wanna give people a perspective, in the
sense that anyone who islistening, grew up with X-ray
machines. They were everywhere.In doctor's offices, you knew
who would use them for what inhospitals. And, what we didn't
know, we hadn't thought of isthey weren't always there. You
know, in the nineteen hundredsis when they first came into
(07:38):
use, and it took a while forthem to spread around and have
adoption.
And this is what we're lookingat today in a sense, in that
focused ultrasound machines werecoming out new, but we're in a
different time. We don't justput them in someplace and say,
well, let's see how this works.There are steps that have to be
taken, regulatory steps. We haveto make sure they work and that
(08:01):
they're safe. It takes more timetoday for a technology like this
to be moved forward.
Dr. Neal Kassell (08:08):
It does. It takes it takes a long time. And
today around the world, thereare about a thousand commercial
treatment sites. In 2022, abouta hundred thousand patients were
treated around the world for avariety of medical disorders
(08:29):
using focused ultrasound inthese 1,000 commercial treatment
sites. It is our belief that inthe next five to ten years, more
than a million patients, wellover a million patients will be
treated every year in about10,000 commercial treatment
sites.
So these technologies evolvefrom an idea or a concept to a
(08:54):
global standard of care,widespread utilization as a
global standard of care, theyevolve exponentially. And in the
last couple of years, we finallypassed the inflection point of
this curve where the dialoguehas clearly shifted from if
focused ultrasound is going tohave a major role in the
(09:17):
therapeutic armamentarium towhen, from if to when. But more
importantly in the last twelveto eighteen months, the field is
transitioning from what's beenhistorically a research and
development environment to acommercial patient treatment
environment. And we're going tosee, as I said, in five to ten
(09:39):
years, more than a millionpatients treated each year.
There's now 71 manufacturers ofthese focused ultrasound
devices.
Ten years ago, there were onlyfive. So the field is rapidly
evolving, not rapidly enough tosatisfy our needs, but rapidly
evolving.
Dr. Moira Gunn (09:58):
Now you're a long term professor of
neurosurgery at the Universityof Virginia, and overlapping
with that, you founded andshared the Focus Ultrasound
Foundation almost twenty yearsago now. When did this
technology come to yourattention? Tell us about that.
Dr. Neal Kassell (10:14):
It's a little bit of a long and complicated
story. So about twenty yearsago, I was casting about for a
solution to a relatively largenumber of patients I had with
brain tumors in surgicallyinaccessible locations, or
patients whose brain tumors hadmaxed out on surgery and
(10:39):
radiation and chemotherapy, andthere was no alternative. So I
was looking for a non invasiveor minimally invasive approach
for this large number ofpatients. And serendipitously I
was operating on a patient withan aneurysm in August about
nineteen years ago and theanesthesiologist, it was a
(11:01):
cardiac anesthesiologist, said,I've been doing studies
measuring the blood flow in theheart muscle with microbubbles
and ultrasound and watching themicrobubbles wash out of the
heart muscle. Why don't you trythe same thing on the brain?
And we did, it was a good way ofmeasuring blood flow in the
(11:22):
brain experimentally. And thenone Friday afternoon at 04:30, I
can remember exactly thelocation and the time, I was
driving home and the light bulbwent off in my head and I said,
I bet that we could useultrasound plus or minus
microbubbles to treat theseotherwise untreatable brain
(11:45):
tumors. And I got really excitedbecause I'd been doing research
since 1962 and I thought now,finally, I have a Nobel prize
winning idea. I raced home, Iwent to the internet and
discovered it was a Nobel prizewinning idea, potentially, just
wasn't mine, but that was okay.
Dr. Moira Gunn (12:06):
Tough luck.
Dr. Neal Kassell (12:07):
So that was my introduction. Yeah.
Dr. Moira Gunn (12:09):
Well, it is amazing though. It's like those
breakthroughs do lead you leadyour mind to think of this one
and then the one after and thenthe one after. You never know
when they're gonna hit you.Today, there are sister
foundations around the world, inHong Kong, The UK, most recently
in The EU, and where there arehumans, you know, everywhere on
(12:30):
the planet, there are theafflictions of life. I know
there are many clinical trialsgoing on today.
Can you just describe one or twothat really pique your interest,
that really push the push theenvelope here?
Dr. Neal Kassell (12:43):
Well, the two areas that we're most excited
about are the brain indications,which include Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's and ALS andHuntington's disease, OCD,
depression, addiction, epilepsy,and so on, and cancer and cancer
(13:05):
immunotherapy. So we're reallyexcited particularly about
Alzheimer's, theneurodegenerative diseases in
particular, and enhancing oraugmenting the effectiveness of
cancer immunotherapy drugsbecause as we all know, these
miraculous drugs are onlyeffective in twenty to forty
percent of patients, dependingon the type of cancer. Focused
(13:29):
ultrasound has the potential toincrease that response rate to
sixty, eighty, maybe even ninetypercent. But there's early stage
studies, there are clinicaltrials and all the indications
are positive. The vectors areheaded in the right direction.
Dr. Moira Gunn (13:46):
Now, in the case of addiction, how might it be
used to ameliorate addiction insome way?
Dr. Neal Kassell (13:55):
Well, there's two ways. Number one is you can
make small lesions in the brain,which will interrupt certain
neural circuits. But moreimportantly, are using focused
ultrasound to modulate neuralactivity, stimulate or block
neural activity in certainregions of the brain, which is a
(14:15):
way of controlling addiction foropioids, for food, and so on
like and tobacco, alcohol, andso on. Again, these are early
stage studies, but they're allvery encouraging.
Dr. Moira Gunn (14:29):
And now we turn to depression. I would assume
that would be different.
Dr. Neal Kassell (14:33):
So there are good clinical trials for OCD and
depression where making verysmall lesions, very small areas
of the brain will improve thelot of patients who are
suffering with OCD or depressionthat have failed multiple drug
(14:56):
therapies. In addition, thereare other studies that are
showing that you can treat OCD,depression and so on, and
anxiety by neuromodulationwithout destroying any nerve
tissue.
Dr. Moira Gunn (15:08):
But what are you doing that's different from the
way these people were beforethey What are you doing with the
focused ultrasound?
Dr. Neal Kassell (15:16):
Nobody knows 100% for sure, but when you
think about it, one of thetraditional treatments for these
psychiatric disorders iselectric shock therapy, which
sort of resets the whole brain,okay? With focused ultrasound,
instead of resetting the neuralcircuits for the entire brain,
(15:36):
you're just resetting thecircuits in specific areas of
the brain that control cravingfor different substances.
Dr. Moira Gunn (15:44):
So this is why it's called research. If we knew
the answer, we wouldn't be doingresearch. And some of this is,
you know, we really are outthere at the edge of seeing what
can be done with thistechnology.
Dr. Neal Kassell (15:57):
Right, the purpose of research is to learn
and that's what we're doing.
Dr. Moira Gunn (16:01):
Well Doctor. Cassell, this has been terrific.
Thank you so much for coming onand I hope you'll come back and
see us again.
Dr. Neal Kassell (16:08):
Look forward to it and thank you for the
opportunity to share the storywith so many of your listeners.
Dr. Moira Gunn (16:13):
Doctor. Neal Kassell is the founder and chair
of the Focused UltrasoundFoundation. More information is
available at fusfoundation.org.The website contains a
surprisingly long list ofmedical conditions, as well as
the current state of research,development, and
commercialization for each. Thisincludes live clinical trials
(16:38):
information and publishedresearch for over 100 identified
medical conditions.
In addition, at this writing,nine medical treatments have
been FDA approved, and anadditional 35 medical conditions
have received internationalapproval. A full list of
treatment centers, bothdomestically and globally, are
(17:00):
identified for every medicalcondition using focused
ultrasound for both approvedtreatments and current medical
research. It lists such specificconditions as uterine fibroids
and Parkinson's, prostate cancerand depression, glaucoma and
hypertension. For example, inthe case of essential tremor, as
(17:23):
of 12/20/2022, the FDA hasapproved what is called stage
bilateral treatment. In fact,the website clearly states that
in The US, all treatment siteshave been approved for payment
under Medicare.
Again, for a full description ofthe experience of the treatment
(17:44):
itself, the website for theFocused Ultrasound Foundation is
fus foundation dot org.
Quick. What is being studied for a diverse
range of conditions in numerousclinical trials around the world
and actually approved for sometreatments? It isn't a pill. It
isn't an injection. It's beenaround for quite some time, and
it's also readily available.
Doctor. Neal Kassell is thefounder and chair of the Focused
(00:33):
Ultrasound Foundation. He joinsme to talk about what Focused
Ultrasound is and the many waysin which it is being used today.
Doctor Kissell, welcome back tothe program.
Dr. Neal Kassell (00:45):
It's a pleasure to be with you again,
Moira.
Dr. Moira Gunn (00:48):
Now the first thing I wanna say to listeners
is that you may never have heardof focused ultrasound before,
but it is being researched allover the world. There are nearly
a thousand commercial treatmentsites where you can get
treatment all over the world.Hundreds of scientific papers
are being produced and it's inuse at major university research
(01:09):
hospitals that you know of and,many companies in this space,
numerous regulatory approvals,numerous clinical trials
underway for a variety ofpotential applications. It may
be new to you if it is new, butthis is by no means new. Still,
I was hoping, doctor Cassell,since there are those who have
(01:30):
not heard of it, what is focusedultrasound, and what does it do
when it comes into contact withthe human body?
Dr. Neal Kassell (01:38):
So focused ultrasound is an early stage,
highly disruptive,revolutionary, totally non
invasive therapeutic technologythat holds the promise to
transform a whole variety ofserious medical disorders. And
(01:59):
it's rapidly growing. Ten yearsago there were only three
medical disorders in variousstages of research and
development andcommercialization. Today there
are more than 180. So the wayfocused ultrasound works is
analogous to using a magnifyingglass to focus beams of light on
(02:21):
a point and burn a hole in aleaf.
But with focused ultrasound,instead of an optical lens
focusing beams of light on apoint to burn a hole in a leaf,
we use an acoustic lens to focusmultiple beams of ultrasound
energy on targets deep in thebody with a high degree of
(02:45):
precision and accuracy sparingthe adjacent normal tissue. So
where each of these individualbeams goes through the tissue,
it has absolutely no effectbecause it only has the power of
diagnostic ultrasound. But atthat focal point where the beams
converge, we now understand morethan 30 ways in which ultrasound
(03:10):
can affect tissue. Ten yearsago, we only understood five.
And this includes destroyingtissue by a variety of
mechanisms, delivering drugs andother therapeutic agents in
extremely high concentrations,higher concentrations that can
be achieved by the normal routesof administration, which
(03:32):
improves the efficacy anddecreases the systemic toxicity.
It could be used to enhancecancer immunotherapy drugs and
so on. The fact that there areso many different mechanisms of
action is what creates theopportunity to treat this large
(03:54):
number of serious medicaldisorders. In contrast to for
instance radiation therapy,which only has one mechanism of
action or a surgical robot,which only has one mechanism of
action. And the point in thebody where the ultrasound is
focused is guided and controlledby medical imaging, either MR
(04:17):
imaging or ultrasound imaging.
Dr. Moira Gunn (04:19):
So if I understand this correctly, if
there was just a single beam,not multiple beams, but a single
beam, it would go through me.Nothing really would happen. But
if you put them all together,focused at a very tiny point,
then we see activity.
Dr. Neal Kassell (04:37):
We see many ways in which it can affect
tissue. It's a whole new way ofdelivering drugs and other
therapeutic agents more safelyand effectively. It's an
amazing, amazing new technology.
Dr. Moira Gunn (04:50):
Now I think everybody can understand how it
could go down to the cellularlevel and destroy cells we don't
want, but it's a little moredifficult to understand how it
could deliver drugs. How wouldthat work?
Dr. Neal Kassell (05:03):
Well there's a large number of ways in which
focused ultrasound can be usedto deliver drugs and other
therapeutic agents. I'll giveyou an example in the most
simple sense. You can usemicrobubbles, which are hollow
lipid spheres, approximately atenth of a diameter of a red
(05:26):
blood cell. And thesemicrobubbles can be loaded up
with drugs, chemotherapy agentsfor cancer, genes or growth
factors for Alzheimer's orParkinson's disease, or ALS or
Huntington's disease. Andmillions and millions of these
microbubbles with the druginside are injected
(05:47):
intravenously and they circulatethroughout the body.
Wherever the blood goes, themicrobubbles go to every tissue
and every organ. But the drug istotally inactive because it's
trapped in the microbubbleexcept at the point where the
ultrasound is focused. And atthat point, and that point only,
(06:08):
the micro bubbles burst andrelease their pharmacological
payload.
Dr. Moira Gunn (06:13):
Well, when we think about taking, whether it's
pills, IV drugs, any of this, weknow they go all over our
system. And in fact, that'swhere many of the side effects
come because we have this drugin the entire system. But you're
saying, well, we could send itto you. It'll go all over the
system, but it's only going toburst. It only gets delivered
(06:35):
where we direct the focusedultrasound.
Dr. Neal Kassell (06:38):
Exactly.
Dr. Moira Gunn (06:39):
Now, while this is worldwide and, there, there
are many clinical trials thathave happened successfully, many
underway now. What conditionstoday have been approved in The
United States for the focusedultrasound?
Dr. Neal Kassell (06:54):
In The United States, there are nine clinical
indications that have beenapproved. Around the world it's
31. And this includes prostatecancer, benign prostatic
hypertrophy, essential tremor,Parkinson's tremor, Parkinson's
disease, pain from bonemetastasis, uterine fibroids,
(07:16):
and so on.
Dr. Moira Gunn (07:17):
I wanna give people a perspective, in the
sense that anyone who islistening, grew up with X-ray
machines. They were everywhere.In doctor's offices, you knew
who would use them for what inhospitals. And, what we didn't
know, we hadn't thought of isthey weren't always there. You
know, in the nineteen hundredsis when they first came into
(07:38):
use, and it took a while forthem to spread around and have
adoption.
And this is what we're lookingat today in a sense, in that
focused ultrasound machines werecoming out new, but we're in a
different time. We don't justput them in someplace and say,
well, let's see how this works.There are steps that have to be
taken, regulatory steps. We haveto make sure they work and that
(08:01):
they're safe. It takes more timetoday for a technology like this
to be moved forward.
Dr. Neal Kassell (08:08):
It does. It takes it takes a long time. And
today around the world, thereare about a thousand commercial
treatment sites. In 2022, abouta hundred thousand patients were
treated around the world for avariety of medical disorders
(08:29):
using focused ultrasound inthese 1,000 commercial treatment
sites. It is our belief that inthe next five to ten years, more
than a million patients, wellover a million patients will be
treated every year in about10,000 commercial treatment
sites.
So these technologies evolvefrom an idea or a concept to a
(08:54):
global standard of care,widespread utilization as a
global standard of care, theyevolve exponentially. And in the
last couple of years, we finallypassed the inflection point of
this curve where the dialoguehas clearly shifted from if
focused ultrasound is going tohave a major role in the
(09:17):
therapeutic armamentarium towhen, from if to when. But more
importantly in the last twelveto eighteen months, the field is
transitioning from what's beenhistorically a research and
development environment to acommercial patient treatment
environment. And we're going tosee, as I said, in five to ten
(09:39):
years, more than a millionpatients treated each year.
There's now 71 manufacturers ofthese focused ultrasound
devices.
Ten years ago, there were onlyfive. So the field is rapidly
evolving, not rapidly enough tosatisfy our needs, but rapidly
evolving.
Dr. Moira Gunn (09:58):
Now you're a long term professor of
neurosurgery at the Universityof Virginia, and overlapping
with that, you founded andshared the Focus Ultrasound
Foundation almost twenty yearsago now. When did this
technology come to yourattention? Tell us about that.
Dr. Neal Kassell (10:14):
It's a little bit of a long and complicated
story. So about twenty yearsago, I was casting about for a
solution to a relatively largenumber of patients I had with
brain tumors in surgicallyinaccessible locations, or
patients whose brain tumors hadmaxed out on surgery and
(10:39):
radiation and chemotherapy, andthere was no alternative. So I
was looking for a non invasiveor minimally invasive approach
for this large number ofpatients. And serendipitously I
was operating on a patient withan aneurysm in August about
nineteen years ago and theanesthesiologist, it was a
(11:01):
cardiac anesthesiologist, said,I've been doing studies
measuring the blood flow in theheart muscle with microbubbles
and ultrasound and watching themicrobubbles wash out of the
heart muscle. Why don't you trythe same thing on the brain?
And we did, it was a good way ofmeasuring blood flow in the
(11:22):
brain experimentally. And thenone Friday afternoon at 04:30, I
can remember exactly thelocation and the time, I was
driving home and the light bulbwent off in my head and I said,
I bet that we could useultrasound plus or minus
microbubbles to treat theseotherwise untreatable brain
(11:45):
tumors. And I got really excitedbecause I'd been doing research
since 1962 and I thought now,finally, I have a Nobel prize
winning idea. I raced home, Iwent to the internet and
discovered it was a Nobel prizewinning idea, potentially, just
wasn't mine, but that was okay.
Dr. Moira Gunn (12:06):
Tough luck.
Dr. Neal Kassell (12:07):
So that was my introduction. Yeah.
Dr. Moira Gunn (12:09):
Well, it is amazing though. It's like those
breakthroughs do lead you leadyour mind to think of this one
and then the one after and thenthe one after. You never know
when they're gonna hit you.Today, there are sister
foundations around the world, inHong Kong, The UK, most recently
in The EU, and where there arehumans, you know, everywhere on
(12:30):
the planet, there are theafflictions of life. I know
there are many clinical trialsgoing on today.
Can you just describe one or twothat really pique your interest,
that really push the push theenvelope here?
Dr. Neal Kassell (12:43):
Well, the two areas that we're most excited
about are the brain indications,which include Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's and ALS andHuntington's disease, OCD,
depression, addiction, epilepsy,and so on, and cancer and cancer
(13:05):
immunotherapy. So we're reallyexcited particularly about
Alzheimer's, theneurodegenerative diseases in
particular, and enhancing oraugmenting the effectiveness of
cancer immunotherapy drugsbecause as we all know, these
miraculous drugs are onlyeffective in twenty to forty
percent of patients, dependingon the type of cancer. Focused
(13:29):
ultrasound has the potential toincrease that response rate to
sixty, eighty, maybe even ninetypercent. But there's early stage
studies, there are clinicaltrials and all the indications
are positive. The vectors areheaded in the right direction.
Dr. Moira Gunn (13:46):
Now, in the case of addiction, how might it be
used to ameliorate addiction insome way?
Dr. Neal Kassell (13:55):
Well, there's two ways. Number one is you can
make small lesions in the brain,which will interrupt certain
neural circuits. But moreimportantly, are using focused
ultrasound to modulate neuralactivity, stimulate or block
neural activity in certainregions of the brain, which is a
(14:15):
way of controlling addiction foropioids, for food, and so on
like and tobacco, alcohol, andso on. Again, these are early
stage studies, but they're allvery encouraging.
Dr. Moira Gunn (14:29):
And now we turn to depression. I would assume
that would be different.
Dr. Neal Kassell (14:33):
So there are good clinical trials for OCD and
depression where making verysmall lesions, very small areas
of the brain will improve thelot of patients who are
suffering with OCD or depressionthat have failed multiple drug
(14:56):
therapies. In addition, thereare other studies that are
showing that you can treat OCD,depression and so on, and
anxiety by neuromodulationwithout destroying any nerve
tissue.
Dr. Moira Gunn (15:08):
But what are you doing that's different from the
way these people were beforethey What are you doing with the
focused ultrasound?
Dr. Neal Kassell (15:16):
Nobody knows 100% for sure, but when you
think about it, one of thetraditional treatments for these
psychiatric disorders iselectric shock therapy, which
sort of resets the whole brain,okay? With focused ultrasound,
instead of resetting the neuralcircuits for the entire brain,
(15:36):
you're just resetting thecircuits in specific areas of
the brain that control cravingfor different substances.
Dr. Moira Gunn (15:44):
So this is why it's called research. If we knew
the answer, we wouldn't be doingresearch. And some of this is,
you know, we really are outthere at the edge of seeing what
can be done with thistechnology.
Dr. Neal Kassell (15:57):
Right, the purpose of research is to learn
and that's what we're doing.
Dr. Moira Gunn (16:01):
Well Doctor. Cassell, this has been terrific.
Thank you so much for coming onand I hope you'll come back and
see us again.
Dr. Neal Kassell (16:08):
Look forward to it and thank you for the
opportunity to share the storywith so many of your listeners.
Dr. Moira Gunn (16:13):
Doctor. Neal Kassell is the founder and chair
of the Focused UltrasoundFoundation. More information is
available at fusfoundation.org.The website contains a
surprisingly long list ofmedical conditions, as well as
the current state of research,development, and
commercialization for each. Thisincludes live clinical trials
(16:38):
information and publishedresearch for over 100 identified
medical conditions.
In addition, at this writing,nine medical treatments have
been FDA approved, and anadditional 35 medical conditions
have received internationalapproval. A full list of
treatment centers, bothdomestically and globally, are
(17:00):
identified for every medicalcondition using focused
ultrasound for both approvedtreatments and current medical
research. It lists such specificconditions as uterine fibroids
and Parkinson's, prostate cancerand depression, glaucoma and
hypertension. For example, inthe case of essential tremor, as
(17:23):
of 12/20/2022, the FDA hasapproved what is called stage
bilateral treatment. In fact,the website clearly states that
in The US, all treatment siteshave been approved for payment
under Medicare.
Again, for a full description ofthe experience of the treatment
(17:44):
itself, the website for theFocused Ultrasound Foundation is
fus foundation dot org.
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