Acoustic Energy Controlled Nanoparticle Aggregation for Nanotherapy.

ABSTRACT

Patients with unresectable or nonablatable tumors are difficult to cure, but nanotherapy combining targeted nanoparticles has many severe side effects due to the toxicities of anticancer drugs. We found that acoustic energy can produce a local region with high concentration from a low concentration suspended liquid of nano-SiO2 particles at 2.5 MHz. Our calculated results show that the main reason for aggregation is the synthesized effect of the potential well of acoustic energy and streaming to trap them. In addition, the aggregated region can be manipulated to a targeted position in the vessel phantom by moving the ultrasound transducer external to the body. This noninvasive manipulation of suspended nanoparticles can rapidly increase the local drug concentration, but reduce the total dosage of anticancer drugs, which has the potential to be used for patients with advanced tumors by improving the physiological effects and reducing the side effects.