October 21, 2025

Ep40: Therapeutic Ultrasound for Glioblastoma: Carthera’s Comparative Clinical Trial

16 minutes

In this episode of Curing with Sound, we explore a groundbreaking approach to one of medicine’s toughest cancers, glioblastoma (GBM), with Michael Canney, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Carthera. GBM is the most aggressive form of brain cancer, notoriously hard to treat because the blood-brain barrier (BBB) blocks many life-saving drugs from reaching tumor cells. With survival rates of just one to two years, new approaches are urgently needed.

Dr. Canney shares how Carthera’s SonoCloud-9, an implantable, therapeutic ultrasound device, temporarily opens the BBB and enhances the delivery of circulating drugs to the brain. He also discusses the SONOBIRD clinical trial, comparing the use of Carthera’s SonoCloud-9 device combined with chemotherapy to standard-of-care therapies in patients with recurrent GBM.

Discussion highlights:

Phase III SONOBIRD Trial: The largest clinical trial in Carthera's history, enrolling 560 patients across the United States and Europe. The trial’s goal is to demonstrate a survival advantage for patients with recurrent GBM when BBB opening is combined with the delivery of carboplatin chemotherapy, as compared with standard of care.

Revolutionizing Drug Delivery: How SonoCloud-9 opens the BBB to increase carboplatin concentrations five- to seven-fold, potentially unlocking the full potential of existing cancer drugs that previously couldn’t reach brain tumors.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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