Ghent Research Group on Nanomedicines, Department of Pharmaceutics, Ghent University, Ottergemsesteenweg 460, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; Cancer Research Institute Ghent (CRIG), Ghent, Belgium.
Physics of Fluids Group, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology and Technical Medical (TechMed) Center, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands.
Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2021 May;172:9-36. doi: 10.1016/j.addr.2021.02.015. Epub 2021 Mar 8.
Apart from its clinical use in imaging, ultrasound has been thoroughly investigated as a tool to enhance drug delivery in a wide variety of applications. Therapeutic ultrasound, as such or combined with cavitating nuclei or microbubbles, has been explored to cross or permeabilize different biological barriers. This ability to access otherwise impermeable tissues in the body makes the combination of ultrasound and therapeutics very appealing to enhance drug delivery in situ. This review gives an overview of the most important biological barriers that can be tackled using ultrasound and aims to provide insight on how ultrasound has shown to improve accessibility as well as the biggest hurdles. In addition, we discuss the clinical applicability of therapeutic ultrasound with respect to the main challenges that must be addressed to enable the further progression of therapeutic ultrasound towards an effective, safe and easy-to-use treatment tailored for drug delivery in patients.
除了在成像方面的临床应用，超声也被深入研究作为一种工具，以增强在各种应用中的药物输送。治疗超声，无论是单独使用还是与空化核或微泡联合使用，都被探索用于跨越或渗透不同的生物屏障。这种进入体内原本不可渗透组织的能力使得超声与治疗相结合非常有吸引力，可以原位增强药物输送。本综述概述了可以使用超声解决的最重要的生物屏障，并旨在提供关于超声如何显示改善可及性以及最大障碍的见解。此外，我们还讨论了治疗超声的临床适用性，以及为了使治疗超声进一步发展成为一种针对患者药物输送的有效、安全和易于使用的治疗方法而必须解决的主要挑战。
