Program Information
A Drug Delivery Technique Employing Pulsed Focused Ultrasound for Prostate Cancer Therapy
L Chen1*, D Cvetkovic2 , R Gupta3 , B Wang4 , C Ma5 , Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA,
Presentations
TU-CD-210-5 (Tuesday, July 14, 2015) 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM Room: 210
Purpose: A number of factors have been identified in the microenvironment of solid tumors that are responsible for non-uniform and insufficient levels of anti-cancer agents being delivered to tumor cells. The purpose of our study is to investigate the improvement of prostate cancer treatment by a novel targeted drug delivery technique combining pulsed high-intensity focused ultrasound (pHIFU) exposures and PTX-encapsulated nanodroplets under MR image guidance.
Methods: Human prostate cancer cells were implanted into the prostates of mice. Three weeks after the implantation tumor growth was monitored using 1.5 T MRI. The tumor–bearing mice were randomly divided into 5 groups (n=3 for each group): Group 1, animals were treated with paclitaxel (PTX)-encapsulated nanodroplets + pHIFU. The formulation of the PTX-encapsulated nanodroplets was: PTX dose 20 mg/kg, Nanoemulsion composition 0.5 percent PTX, 1 percent perfluorocarbon and 2 percent stabilizing block copolymer. Ultrasound treatment parameters were 1MHz, 25W acoustic power, 10% duty cycle and 60 sec for each sonication point. Animals in group 2 were treated with pHIFU alone. Animals in group 3 were injected with PTX-encapsulated nanodroplets alone, Group 4 received pFUS+empty nanodroplets and group 5 was used as control. After treatment, animals were allowed to survive for 3 weeks.
Results: Compared with the control group tumor growth delay was observed with P=0.001 in group 1, p=0.292 in group2 and P=0.158 in group 4, respectively. There was no significant difference in the tumor volume between the control group and the group received PTX-encapsulated nanodroplets alone (group 3).
Conclusion: Our preliminary results showed a great potential for prostate cancer therapy using targeted PTX+ nanodroplets, which could be activated by pHIFU. More experimental studies are warranted to confirm the results and for pHIFU parameter optimization. The role of pHIFU in targeted drug delivery needs to be investigated.
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