Ultra-Rapid Ultrasound Drug Delivery to the Gastrointestinal Tract

Using ultrasound waves, researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have found a way to enable ultra-rapid delivery of drugs to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This approach could make it easier to deliver drugs to patients suffering from GI disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn's disease. Currently, such diseases are usually treated with drugs administered as an enema, which must be maintained in the colon for hours while the drug is absorbed. However, this can be difficult for patients who are suffering from diarrhea and incontinence. To overcome that, the researchers sought a way to stimulate more rapid drug absorption.

Transcript

00:00:05 Gastrointestinal-based diseases such as inflammatory bowl disease are a huge problem because them impair the organs' function locally and cause really severe inflammation of the tissue directly. And so, you need to get local concentrations of drug to that tissue to tamp down the

00:00:21 inflammation but a lot of the symptoms that come along with these diseases prevent being able to retain the drug locally to get sufficient absorption to treat the inflammation. So, the problem that we're addressing here is ensuring the drug reaches the tissue, and insuring that happens as

00:00:38 fast as possible so that the drug can start exerting its affect on the disease. So the technology utilizes ultrasound and most people are familiar with ultrasound in the clinic for imaging, for example, and that's very high-frequencies. This device uses really low frequencies,

00:00:53 below about 100 kilohertz. What happens at those frequencies is when ultrasound is propagating through a fluid it actually nucleates little bubbles. And these bubbles move around chaotically and they stir the solution. Eventually they actually implode and that creates little jets of the

00:01:10 surrounding solution, and its when these jets hit the tissue they're able to, sort of, physically push the drug into the tissue, and thats how you get this ultra-rapid delivery and pushing of the medication into the tissue, locally. As opposed to just waiting for the drug to slowly, sort of, transit

00:01:27 or diffuse into the tissue. Here it is an active form of delivery. So we really hope this technology can make it to the clinic, be used by the patients who need it the most to improve clinical outcomes and improve really the quality of life they they're able to live.