Ultrasound-mediated drug-free theranostics for treatment of prostate cancer.

Lipid-shelled nanobubbles (NBs) can be visualized and activated using noninvasive ultrasound (US) stimulation, leading to significant bioeffects. Prior work demonstrates that active targeting of NBs to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) overexpressed in prostate cancer (PCa) results in enhanced cellular internalization and prolongs NB retention with persistent, cancer-cell specific acoustic activity. In this work, we hypothesized that tumor-accumulated PSMA-NBs combined with low frequency unfocused therapeutic US (TUS) will lead to selective damage and induce a specific therapeutic effect in PSMA-expressing tumors compared to PSMA-negative tumors.

Ultrasound-mediated drug-free theranostics for treatment of prostate cancer.

Rationale: Lipid-shelled nanobubbles (NBs) can be visualized and activated using noninvasive ultrasound (US) stimulation, leading to significant bioeffects. We have previously shown that active targeting of NBs to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) overexpressed in prostate cancer (PCa) enhances the cellular internalization and prolongs retention of NBs with persistent acoustic activity (~hrs.).