WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute expands pioneering Alzheimer’s treatment to wider region of the brain

A hospital nurse for 33 years, Nanette Miller would call her husband Frank at the end of each shift to let him know she was coming home. On Dec. 7, 2018, the phone call came with a somber declaration: “I can’t do this anymore.”

Miller had to help on another hospital floor that day. She didn’t know how to get back.

Several months later, she was diagnosed with what she and her husband had feared —early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

But now, not even a year removed from her official diagnosis, Miller is already on a road to potential recovery due to the expansion of a groundbreaking technique crafted by the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute.

Using focused ultrasound, Dr. Ali Rezai, executive chair of the RNI, and his team successfully opened the blood-brain barrier in a clinical trial with Miller, 54, of Mill Run, Pennsylvania.

Read the full story from West Virginia University here.