Effect of infusion direction on convection-enhanced drug delivery to anisotropic tissue

Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) can effectively overcome the blood-brain barrier by infusing drugs directly into diseased sites in the brain using a catheter, but its clinical performance still needs to be improved. This is strongly related to the highly anisotropic characteristics of brain white matter, which results in difficulties in controlling drug transport and distribution in space. In this study, the potential to improve the delivery of six drugs by adjusting the placement of the infusion catheter is examined using a mathematical model and accurate numerical simulations that account simultaneously for the interstitial fluid (ISF) flow and drug transport processes in CED. The results demonstrate the ability of this direct infusion to enhance ISF flow and therefore facilitate drug transport. However, this enhancement is highly anisotropic, subject to the orientation of local axon bundles and is limited within a small region close to the infusion site. Drugs respond in different ways to infusion direction: the results of our simulations show that while some drugs are almost insensitive to infusion direction, this strongly affects other compounds in terms of isotropy of drug distribution from the catheter. These findings can serve as a reference for planning treatments using CED.