Investigating the mechanism of acoustically activated uptake of drugs from Pluronic micelles

• Main Authors: Runyan Christopher M, Husseini Ghaleb A, Pitt William G
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2002-08-01
• Series: BMC Cancer
• Subjects: Micellar drug delivery; Pluronic; flow cytometry; ultrasound
• Online Access: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/2/20

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper examines the mechanism of ultrasonic enhanced drug delivery from Pluronic micelles. In previous publications by our group, fluorescently labeled Pluronic was shown to penetrate HL-60 cells with and without the action of ultrasound, while drug uptake was increased with the application of ultrasound.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, the amount of uptake of two fluorescent probes, Lysosensor Green (a pH-sensitive probe) and Cell Tracker Orange CMTMR (a pH-independent probe), was measured in HL-60 and HeLa cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results of our experiments show that the increase in drug accumulation in the cells as a result of ultrasonication is not due to an increase in endocytosis due to ultrasonication.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We hypothesize that sonoporation plays an important role in the acoustically activated drug delivery of chemotherapy drugs delivered from Pluronic micelles.</p>