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

Abstract

Abstract Background 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. Methods 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. Results 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. Conclusions We hypothesize that sonoporation plays an important role in the acoustically activated drug delivery of chemotherapy drugs delivered from Pluronic micelles.

Keywords

• Micellar drug delivery
• Pluronic
• flow cytometry
• ultrasound