Technologies

The inventors have developed a method for manipulating the physical location of cells in suspension using ultrasonic microbbuble technology. The novel principle of this method consists of tagging gas-filled, acoustically active microspheres (microbubbles) to cell-specific markers which enable attachment of the microbubbles to the cells, and then imparting kinetic energy to these microbubble-cell complexes using radiation force generated with ultrasound. The general concept is that by attaching acoustically active microbubbles to a cell, the cell can be made to move to a specific area by directing ultrasound, which creates acoustic radiation force, to push the cell to the desired site. We are describing a specific application for this concept, namely accelerated stent or vascular graft endothelization using intravascular ultrasound. The general concept, however, can be extended to other therapeutic applications, such as local drug delivery to specific sites using microbubbles as drug vehicles directed to target sites using ultrasound-mediated acoustic radiation force.