The University of Dundee is leading UK research into a groundbreaking technique which, by using ultrasound energy to increase the amount of a drug that can enter biological cells, could greatly increase the effectiveness of drugs in destroying tumours and curing genetic diseases.
The technique, called sonoporation, uses the same ultrasound scanning technique as is typically used to undertake foetal scans in pregnant women. Scientists have found that by altering the ultrasound field characteristics, pores can be created in the lipid membrane which surrounds the cells being targeted. The lipid membrane normally acts as a barrier to drug molecules, so creating pores allows the drug to enter more freely.
Initial tests found that around 25% of exposed cell populations took up some of the drug molecules: a figure that compares very favourably with alternative chemical or biochemical-based drug delivery.
Dr Paul Campbell, who is leading the research at the University's Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology at Ninewells Hospital, is to travel to the USA next Monday where he and two of his PhD students will spend the summer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. There they will work with the institution's Professor Mark Prausnitz, who has pioneered sonoporation research.
Dr Campbell said, "This is a completely new area of research in the UK and holds a great deal of promise it has the potential to be in use within the next five or six years.
"The use of ultrasound energy also offers some key advantages in that the instrumentation to undertake the process already exists in every hospital in the developed world; it is intrinsically safe in operation; and crucially requires no physical surgery in order to gain access to the tissues or organs of interest, as ultrasound can be focused from outside the body."
Please contact Jane Smernicki in the University Press Office if you wish to interview Dr Campbell.
By Jane Smernicki, Press Officer 01382 344768 j.m.smernicki@dundee.ac.uk