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What do you do when your body is it's own enemy?

Lining the vessels that carry blood and oxygen to your brain, there’s a protective filter than keeps bad stuff from getting out of the bloodstream and into the brain where it can do harm. It’s called the blood-brain barrier. But this feature becomes a problem when doctors need to get chemotherapy to a brain tumor. That protective barrier then stands between cancer and drugs that could treat it. Physician-scientist Cheng-Chia “Fred” Wu of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute is investigating how to use sound to temporarily open that barrier to allow cancer drugs to reach brain tumors, like those caused by the highly lethal childhood cancer he treats, diffuse midline glioma.

Wu is an assistant professor with labs at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke and the Children's National Research & Innovation Campus in Washington, D.C., where he partners with Children's National Hospital on patient trials, including a pioneering effort to use low intensity focused ultrasound to treat pediatric brain tumors.