Abstract
Cardiac-cerebral thrombosis and malignant tumor endanger the safety of human life seriously. Traditional chemotherapy drugs have side effects which restrict their applications. Drug-loaded microbubbles can be destroyed by ultrasound irradiation at the focus position and be used for thrombolysis and tumor therapy. Compared with traditional drug treatment, the drug-loaded microbubbles can be excited by ultrasound and release drugs to lesion sites, increasing the local drug concentration and the exposure dose to nonfocal regions, thus reducing the cytotoxicity and side effects of drugs. This article reviews the applications of drug-loaded microbubbles combined with ultrasound for thrombolysis and tumor therapy. We focus on highlighting the advantages of using this new technique for disease treatment and concluding with recommendations for future efforts on the applications of this technology.
Highlights
Ultrasound is applied to clinical imaging originally, but a series of other biological effects caused by ultrasound can be used in the treatment of solid tumors, leukemia, atherosclerosis, and few other diseases
Ultrasound-based therapy is generally called sonodynamic therapy (SDT), and its mechanism of therapeutic applications is mainly the cavitation effect caused by acoustic waves, that is, mechanical pressure caused by ultrasound, resulting in physical damage to the cytomembrane
Tumor cells of the liver and an increase of 110% in drug levels within the peripheral of the tumor in vivo studies using the VX2 tumor model. e results indicated that drug delivery and tumor therapy could be achieved by applying DOX-loaded poly(lactic acid) (PLA) contrast agents combined with ultrasound
Summary
Ultrasound is applied to clinical imaging originally, but a series of other biological effects caused by ultrasound can be used in the treatment of solid tumors, leukemia, atherosclerosis, and few other diseases. Compared with traditional drug treatment, drug-loaded microbubbles in combination with ultrasound can release the drugs in diseased regions, increasing local drug concentration and reducing toxic side effects of drugs [43,44,45,46]. In this method, drugs carried by microbubbles can reach tumor area via blood circulation and be released in tumor tissue by ultrasound. Studies suggest that ultrasonic radiation combined with drug-loaded microbubbles can dissolve thrombus directly by releasing drugs at the targeted sites, improving the effect of thrombolysis [58]. Is article focuses on reviewing the advancements in the treatment of thrombus and tumor by using drug-loaded microbubbles combined with ultrasound. With ultrasound facilitated the opening of BBB, significantly improving the release of targeted drugs [85]
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