Thiele Kobus1,2, Yongzhi Zhang2, Natalia Vykhodtseva2, and Nathan McDannold2
1Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
We studied
the treatment effect of HER2-targeting antibodies in combination with MR-guided
focused ultrasound (FUS) to disrupt the blood-brain barrier in a breast cancer
brain metastasis model. Tumors were implanted in rats and animals either
received no treatment, six weekly treatments with antibodies, or six treatments
of the antibodies combined with FUS-mediated BBB disruption. MR was used to
guide the treatments and monitor tumor volume. 4/10 animals in the
FUS+antibody-group responded to the treatment, but none of the other animals
did. We could not explain with our results why only some of the
FUS+antibody-animals responded and this requires further investigation.