Ultrasound-mediated targeted drug delivery generated by multifocal beam patterns: an in vitro study

Ultrasound-mediated targeted drug delivery has been a subject for a dedicated research activity for several decades. Nevertheless, in vitro studies in this field of research are characterized by their inconsistencies. To improve the repeatability of such experiments, a novel approach of multifocal spot generation was investigated. A multifocal pattern of 16 spots was utilized using an iterative Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm. The pattern was applied to insonate a 96-well Petri dish plate using a clinically available planar-phased array transducer with approximately 1000 elements with a central frequency of 0.55 MHz. The pattern was acoustically characterized and applied to a monolayer of human breast cancer cell line in the 96-well plate. With the help of ultrasonic contrast agents, the intracellular drug uptake was increased by an average factor of 3.5 compared with the control group.