To improve the outcome of intracellular delivery by microbubble‐facilitated sonoporation.

Abstract

Microbubble‐facilitated sonoporation, or the ultrasound‐induced disruption of plasma membrane, provides new opportunities for intracellular delivery of therapeutic agents. However, ultrasound mediated microbubble‐cell interaction is difficult to control due to the very nature of unconfined microbubbles in solution, resulting in relatively low delivery efficiency and often variable delivery outcome. It is desirable to develop techniques in order to achieve reproducible, robust delivery outcome. By utilizing targeted microbubbles to control and confine microbubbles near the cells and examine the detailed biophysical and cellular processes of the interaction of ultrasound‐driven microbubbles with cells, we seek to obtain improved understanding of the disruption of cell plasma membrane, cellular uptake, and subsequent downstream effects in sonoporation. In this presentation, we describe our studies that examined these aspects and the important factors involved in sonoporation outcome using multidisciplinary a...