Ultrasound and Microbubble-Mediated Targeted Delivery of Drug Loaded Nanoparticles to Porcine Liver

In this paper, we adapt and validate a platform for ultrasound (US)and microbubble (MB)-mediated delivery of drug-loaded poly lactic-co-glycolic acid nanoparticles (NPs)to liver cancer in a large animal model as a further step toward clinical translation. A single-probe ultrasound setup was used for image-guided NP delivery using clinically approved MBs. Acoustic parameters were optimized in a phantom study. Experiments were conducted in a healthy pig model to validate the platform and test the delivery efficacy in vivo. The US/MB treatment resulted in 1.9-fold increase in expression of exogenous anticancer microRNA with respect to an untreated liver region and 1884-fold increase relative to a control animal.