Research

Select Projects

Enhanced identification of tumour DNA with ultrasound and microbubbles

Related Researcher: Matthew Chen

Liquid biopsies are the latest development in diagnosing and monitoring diseases. In oncology, this involves collecting tumour DNA that has been released into the blood stream to genetically characterize tumour. However certain cancer types having limited DNA release, which necessitates the use of ultrasound to enhance their release. Despite these enhancements, the limited amount of DNA can be lost in the naturally present DNA in circulation. Microbubbles are acoustically-active, lipid stabilized agents that are commonly used with medical ultrasound. This acoustic energy can disrupt these microbubbles to produce lipid particles. Using labelled lipids, this project aims to create lipid-DNA particles that can be used to identify tumour specific DNA.

Enhanced genicular artery embolization for osteoarthritis treatment: synthesis, characterization, and evaluation of a novel embolic agent

Related Researcher: Mohammad Moeini

Osteoarthritis (OA) affects over 500 million individuals worldwide, with the knee joint accounting for most cases. Most OA patients face a treatment gap, where non-invasive therapies fail, and surgery is not an option. Targeted embolotherapy is a minimally-invasive technique with expanding application in a range of medical conditions, such as treatment of hyper-vascular tumors, arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), aneurysms, and OA. The embolic agents employed in these applications range from liquid to particulate agents. In addition, these agents may be non-degradable, leading to permanent vessel occlusion, or biodegradable, offering temporary embolization. Successful clinical outcome of trans-arterial embolization highly relies on optimal embolic agent design, tailored for specific applications. The purpose of this project is to develop, fabricate, and evaluate a degradable embolic agent that is specifically designed to target OA progression and pain. Our lab has developed HACit microparticles to address this gap, and current work involves ensuring critical design requirements are met, including sphericity, size distribution, degradation profile, drug-eluting capabilities, and viscoelasticity.

Ultrasound-stimulated drug-loaded bubbles to potentiate breast cancer therapy

Related Researcher: Patrick Dong Min Chang

Docetaxel (DTX) is a potent anticancer drug systemically administered for chemotherapy to treat locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) patients. However, its clinical formulation suffers from limited drug accumulation in tumours and its non-selective distribution affects healthy organs to induce adverse, undesired side effects. To overcome these challenges, one strategy examines the potential of DTX-loaded drug carriers to improve the anticancer potential of DTX for improved LABC therapy. Therefore, my research project examines the synthesis, characterization, and application of DTX-loaded phospholipid-stabilized nanobubbles that can be “popped” using focused ultrasound to locally deliver DTX in a non-invasive, spatiotemporally-controlled manner while inducing tumour vascular damage concurrently.

Ultrasound images with region of interest (ROI) delineated in yellow showing a colon carcinoma tumour under brightness mode (B-mode) and contrast-enhanced mode ultrasound (CEUS) with microbubbles injected before and after focused ultrasound (FUS) treatment using docetaxel-loaded nanobubbles. Images on the top row are the tumour treated with 1.65 MPa of FUS treatment and images on the bottom row are the tumour with DTX-NB injection only. Significant signal reduction was observed for the FUS treated group whereas negligible signal loss was observed for the control group. A portion close to the tumour region with perfusion after FUS treatment was seen (red arrow).

Focused ultrasound triggered drug carriers for water-soluble cargo in anticancer therapy

Related Researcher: Samuel Penner

This project focuses on the synthesis of nanomaterials leveraging a wide variety of tools such as microfluidics and self assembly to design drug delivery platforms for simultaneous cancer therapy and imaging. This project also includes materials characterization such as EM imaging and fluorescence microscopy to better understand the behaviour of synthesized nanostructures in situ before pre-clinical tests of these materials.

Enhanced drug delivery to lung cancer using endobronchial ultrasound

Related Researchers: Sean McGrath & Osama Khan

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related deaths. The overall survival drops precipitously after the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. Although systemic chemotherapy is a standard of care treatment, achieving high drug concentrations in the metastatic lymph nodes remains a challenge. While microbubbles have been previously used to enhance local blood vessel permeability, allowing coinjected drugs preferential uptake, this has never been applied inside the lung due to physical limitations of sonicating through the alveolar air. Endobronchial ultrasound, a modified bronchoscope that integrates an ultrasound probe at the tip, is already used clinically for mediastinal staging in lung cancer, and provides an opportunity for ultrasound-microbubble assisted chemotherapy treatment inside of the lung.