Minimally-invasive implantable device enhances brain cancer suppression.

ABSTRACT

Current brain tumor treatments are limited by the skull and BBB, leading to poor prognosis and short survival for glioma patients. We introduce a novel minimally-invasive brain tumor suppression (MIBTS) device combining personalized intracranial electric field therapy with in-situ chemotherapeutic coating. The core of our MIBTS technique is a wireless-ultrasound-powered, chip-sized, lightweight device with all functional circuits encapsulated in a small but efficient "Swiss-roll" structure, guaranteeing enhanced energy conversion while requiring tiny implantation windows ( ~ 3 × 5 mm), which favors broad consumers acceptance and easy-to-use of the device. Compared with existing technologies, competitive advantages in terms of tumor suppressive efficacy and therapeutic resolution were noticed, with maximum ~80% higher suppression effect than first-line chemotherapy and 50-70% higher than the most advanced tumor treating field technology. In addition, patient-personalized therapy strategies could be tuned from the MIBTS without increasing size or adding circuits on the integrated chip, ensuring the optimal therapeutic effect and avoid tumor resistance. These groundbreaking achievements of MIBTS offer new hope for controlling tumor recurrence and extending patient survival.