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News & Events

National Meeting

The BBB Program conducts an internationally acclaimed annual meeting of leading clinical and preclinical experts in brain tumors and the blood-brain barrier. The 15th annual meeting was held March 19-21, 2009 at Salishan Resort, Gleneden Beach, OR, in collaboration with the International Brain Barriers Society.

All participants at the BBBD Annual Meeting in March, 2009

BBBD Annual Meeting at Salishan, March 2009

 

The 2010 meeting will be held March 18-20 at Sunriver Resort near Bend, Oregon.  The focus of the meeting will be translational research in the blood-brain barrier and/or neuro-oncology.  We plan to post the preliminary scientific program by late November.

 

Upcoming BBB presentations

 

Recent scientific publications

For a list of selected publications from Dr. Neuwelt and the BBB Program, please see the Publications page.

Angelov L, Doolittle N, Kraemer D, Siegal T, Barnett G, Peereboom D, Stevens G, McGregor J, Jahnke K, Lacy D, Hedrick N, Shalom E, Ference S, Bell S, Sorenson L, Tyson R, Haluska M, Neuwelt E.  Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption and Intra-Arterial Methotrexate-Based Therapy for Newly Diagnosed Primary CNS Lymphoma:  A Multi-Institutional Experience. J Clin Oncol 27:3503-3509, 2009.

This report summarizes the multi-institutional experience of 149 newly diagnosed patients with primary CNS lymphoma treated with osmotic blood-brain barrier disruption (BBBD) and intra-arterial (IA) methotrexate at four institutions from 1982 to 2005.  This series of patients treated over a 23-year period demonstrates that BBBD/IA methotrexate-based chemotherapy results in successful and durable tumor control and outcomes that are comparable or superior to other primary CNS lymphoma treatment regimens.

Varallyay et al. Dynamic MRI using a blood pool agent ferumoxytol and gadodiamide in evaluating early vascular effects of dexamethasone and bevacizumab in an intracerebral glioma model. J Cerebral Blood Flow Metab, in press 2009.

We used serial dynamic contrast enhanced MRI at 12 Tesla to assess vascular responses to anti-angiogenic versus steroid therapy in rats with intracerebral glioma. We found that bevacizumab (Avastin) significantly decreased the blood volume and decreased permeability in tumors within 24 hours. We conclude that dynamic perfusion MRI measurements with ferumoxytol iron oxide nanoparticles holds promise in more accurately detecting therapeutic responses to anti-angiogenic therapy.

Jahnke et al. Efficacy and magnetic resonance imaging of rituximab and methotrexate treatment in a nude rat central nervous system lymphoma model. Neuro-Oncology, in press 2009.

 The goal of this study was to determine the efficacy of methotrexate and/or rituximab in a rat model of central nervous system lymphoma, and evaluate MRI modalities for monitoring efficacy.  Intravenous rituximab gave an objective tumor response while IV methotrexate slowed tumor growth, compared to controls.  In the treatment groups, T2 MRI correlated with histology of tumor, but the gadolinium-enhanced T1 MRI did not.  We conclude that T2 was superior to contrast-enhanced T1 for monitoring efficacy of monoclonal antibody therapy.