Arterial Treatment of Neurological Diseases Current Status and Future Directions

Drug delivery by injecting them through arteries poses unique challenges. The first attempts to treat malignant brain tumors by arterial injections were undertaken soon after World War II. Yet, the applications of arterial delivery in treating neurological diseases have not advanced significantly over the last seventy years. Although arterial drug delivery is used to treat several neurological conditions, its applications, other than for localization of brain functions, remain experimental and are unproven in robust scientific studies. Over the last two decades, interventional radiology has significantly advanced by developing catheter-based devices, but arterial drug development has largely been ignored. This book makes the case for arterial drug development. Unless drugs are developed explicitly for arterial injections, the vast potential of arterial treatments of neurological diseases will remain untapped.  

This multi-author book brings together experienced researchers and clinicians to investigate various applications of arterial drug delivery for treating neurological diseases. It’s an essential resource for various medical subspecialties related to the field and to advance pharmacological and clinical research with this mode of drug delivery.

The Evolution of Arterial Drug Delivery: The Underlying Concepts and Technology (Chapter 1).- Conceptual Justification of Intra-arterial Drug Delivery (Chapter 2).- Developing Patient-Specific Arterial Drug Delivery Models (Chapter 3).- Nanocarriers for Transportation Across the Blood-Brain Barrier (Chapter 4).- The Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption Methods for Drug Delivery (Chapter 5).- Magnetic Resonance-Guided Focused Ultrasound Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption for Targeted Delivery of Therapeutics to the Central Nervous System (Chapter 6).- Intra-arterial Drug Delivery for Brain Tumors (Chapter 7).- The Wada Test: Intraarterial Anesthetics for Localization of Neurological Functions (Chapter 8).- Neuroendovascular Therapies for Acute Ischemic Stroke (Chapter 9).- Intraarterial Vasodilator Treatment for Cerebral Vasospasm After SAH: Where Are We, and Where Do We Go? (Chapter 10).- Lessons from Intra-arterial Chemotherapy for Retinoblastoma (Chapter 11).- Developing Arterial Drugs: Lessons from the Hepatic Artery and Other Arterial Injections (Chapter 12).- Hepatic Arterial Infusion Therapy: Strategies for Safe Long-term Arterial Infusions (Chapter 13).- Intra-arterial Gene Delivery for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Chapter 14).- Intra-arterial Delivery of Stem Cells: Their Role in Stroke Treatment (Chapter 15).- Complication of Arterial Drug Injections: Treading Cautiously Beyond Primum Non-Nocere (Chapter 16).- Enhancing Safety of Angiographic Procedures for Drug Delivery: An Overview of Safety Precautions in Interventional Neuroradiology Procedures (Chapter 17).- The Evolution of the Transvascular Catheters: From Material, Construction, and Technological Perspectives (Chapter 18).- Tools for Arterial Drug Delivery Research: The Case for Optical Measurements (Chapter 19).- An Optical Approach to Intra-arterial Drug Development for Brain Tumor Treatment (Chapter 20).- Robotics in Neurointervention (Chapter 21).- Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Arterial Drug Delivery and Beyond (Chapter 22).- Arterial Drug Delivery in Future Translational Neuroscience Research: Another Approach to Acute Ischemic Stroke Treatment (Chapter 23).

Shailendra Joshi is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at CUMC. He has been involved with arterial drug delivery since 1995 and pioneered many novel concepts.