Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 30013 Taiwan.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701 Taiwan.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jan 26;118(4). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2023188118.
Spatially concentrating and manipulating biotherapeutic agents within the circulatory system is a longstanding challenge in medical applications due to the high velocity of blood flow, which greatly limits drug leakage and retention of the drug in the targeted region. To circumvent the disadvantages of current methods for systemic drug delivery, we propose tornado-inspired acoustic vortex tweezer (AVT) that generates net forces for noninvasive intravascular trapping of lipid-shelled gaseous microbubbles (MBs). MBs are used in a diverse range of medical applications, including as ultrasound contrast agents, for permeabilizing vessels, and as drug/gene carriers. We demonstrate that AVT can be used to successfully trap MBs and increase their local concentration in both static and flow conditions. Furthermore, MBs signals within mouse capillaries could be locally improved 1.7-fold and the location of trapped MBs could still be manipulated during the initiation of AVT. The proposed AVT technique is a compact, easy-to-use, and biocompatible method that enables systemic drug administration with extremely low doses.
在循环系统中对生物治疗剂进行空间集中和操作是医学应用中的一个长期挑战，因为血流速度很高，这极大地限制了药物泄漏和药物在目标区域的保留。为了规避当前全身药物递送方法的缺点，我们提出了受旋风启发的声涡旋镊子（AVT），它可以产生净力，用于非侵入性血管内捕获脂质壳气态微泡（MB）。MB 广泛用于多种医学应用，包括作为超声造影剂、用于使血管通透以及作为药物/基因载体。我们证明，AVT 可用于成功捕获 MB 并增加其在静态和流动条件下的局部浓度。此外，在启动 AVT 时，还可以将小鼠毛细血管内的 MB 信号局部提高 1.7 倍，并仍然可以操纵捕获 MB 的位置。所提出的 AVT 技术是一种紧凑、易于使用且生物相容的方法，可通过极低剂量进行全身药物给药。
