Vascular microbubbles for therapy

Abstract
Embolotherapy involves the occlusion of blood flow to tumors to treat a variety of cancers, including renal carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma. The accompanying liver cirrhosis makes the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma by traditional methods difficult. Previous attempts at embolotherapy have used solid emboli, such as blood clot, gelatin sponge, particulates, balloons and streamers. A major difficulty in embolotherapy is restricting delivery of the emboli to the tumor, i.e. minimizing ischemia of healthy tissue, without extremely invasive procedures. We are developing a novel minimally invasive gas embolotherapy technique that uses gas bubbles rather than solid emboli. The bubbles originate as encapsulated liquid perfluorocarbon droplets that are small enough to pass through capillaries. The droplets can be selectively vaporized /in vivo/ by focused high intensity ultrasound to form gas bubbles which are then sufficiently large to lodge in the tumor vasculature. Understanding the potential bioeffects from acoustic droplet vaporization and the mechanisms of emboli transport and lodging is essential to designing treatment strategies that achieve highly selective delivery of the gas emboli to the tumor. Therefore, we are investigating the biofluid dynamics of microbubbles for therapy using a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches. Our work on acoustic droplet vaporization, microbubble transport, and microbubble lodging will be discussed.

Biography

Joseph Bull is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He also holds a secondary appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery. His research is focused on fundamental and applied aspects of biological fluid mechanics and transport at a variety of scales, primarily in the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems and related biomedical devices. Dr. Bull has received a number of research and teaching awards, such as the John F. Ullrich Education Excellence Award, Parker B. Francis Fellowship, and Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Research Award.

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Faculty host: Ramakrishna Mukkamala - (rama@egr.msu.edu)