Intramedullary spinal cord tumors are abnormal growths in the central nervous system. Treating these tumors is challenging as we don't have a well-defined course of treatment, limited options for therapy, and difficulties in getting medicines to the right spot. A key hurdle in getting the drugs where they're needed is the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB). It's a complex structure that guard access to the spinal cord tissue, stopping most molecules from entering the spinal cord from the blood circulation, which makes it hard to test potential tumor treatments. Our project develops a new way to bypass this guard temporarily, allowing for a wider range of potential drugs to reach these tumors. ...

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Intramedullary spinal cord tumors are abnormal growths in the central nervous system. Treating these tumors is challenging as we don't have a well-defined course of treatment, limited options for therapy, and difficulties in getting medicines to the right spot. A key hurdle in getting the drugs where they're needed is the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB). It's a complex structure that guard access to the spinal cord tissue, stopping most molecules from entering the spinal cord from the blood circulation, which makes it hard to test potential tumor treatments. Our project develops a new way to bypass this guard temporarily, allowing for a wider range of potential drugs to reach these tumors. We plan to achieve this by using tiny particles that can "target" the blood vessels in the tumor area and using light to remotely stimulate the particles to loosen up the barrier. First, we're going to make iron oxide particles that can stick well to these blood vessels and absorb light energy. An important reason to choose iron oxide nanoparticles is that there are several FDA-approved versions, making it easier for future clinical translation. Next, we'll look at the status of the BSCB in spinal cord tumors and determine how the BSCB opens in these tissues. We'll also monitor how the spinal cord responds to the opening of the BSCB at a cellular level to ensure the procedure is safe. Lastly, we'll test how effective this method is at delivering anticancer drugs in animal models of these tumors. Our goal is to test a light-induced method of opening the BSCB to better understand how we could treat these spinal cord tumors. Once we've proven this works, we'll bring together a team of different researchers, including experts in clinical MRI scanning, oncologist, and neurosurgeons, to investigate this method in larger animals (like pigs) and consider the potential for human clinical trials.

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