Ultrasound boosts drug delivery to tumors
From Chicago, at the 87th annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America
A beam of ultrasound can make the blood vessels that infiltrate cancerous growths leakier than normal, a process that might be used to increase the dose of anticancer drugs reaching tumors from the bloodstream.
Physicians already use ultrasound to identify tumors in the liver and to guide biopsy procedures, says Jonathan B. Kruskal of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Meanwhile, cardiology research has hinted that ultrasound might make blood vessels more permeable.