Background/problem
Ideally, a drug meant to accurately target specific tissues or cells involved in a disease will do so and achieve an optimal dose and treatment duration. These will yield the intended cellular and physiological response without undue off-target and side effects. And yet, we live with the reality and risks of side effects. Novel drug delivery systems (DDS) to improve delivery and overcome off-target effects are available, but with limitations that include low tissue penetration, poor spatiotemporal resolution, and even complex engineering. Focused ultrasound (FUS) offers exceptional tissue penetration depth, millimetric spatial resolution, and an exemplary safety profile. However, it causes indefinite target breaking events that lowers its precision and programmability. It also has limited drug loading capacity.
Technology overview/solution
To address these limitations of existing FUS-triggered drug delivery methods, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin designed a technology that uses porous hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs) as programmable nanoparticle toolkits for precise FUS-triggered drug activation. Here, FUS controls specific cellular events via on-demand scission of hydrogen-bonding and π-π stacking interactions (within the HOFs). This technology achieved non-invasive drug activation even at the deep tissue (high to 10 cm) and high drug loading content. It also exhibited extremely high sensitivity for drug activation, with ~1 sec latency after ultrasound stimulation. Hence, the system boasts excellent programmability and on-demand drug activation.
Benefits
Instead of delivering drugs systemically, which affects the whole body, this non-invasive, spatiotemporally controlled drug delivery system can administer drugs locally at a desired timing, which can decrease off-target/side effects and drug toxicity while maximizing a treatment’s impact.
Opportunity
This technology facilitates the establishment of precise molecular therapeutic possibilities at a new level, exhibiting great potential for drug delivery, disease treatment, or even basic biomedical science. The technology comes with a theoretical model that provides guidelines for the rational design of customized HOFs for specialized applications. The use of controlled and targeted DDS like the above are expected to drive the growth of “novel DDS markets” which are projected to surge at a CAGR of 6.6% (2022-2027), anticipated to climb to a market size of $86B by 2027. For parties/companies with interest in advanced/novel drug delivery systems and methods, therapeutics/drugs, nanoparticle delivery, diseases, etc.
