Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Localized, controlled drug release has gained clinical relevance in treating proliferative diseases in the past decade. The rapidly proliferating cells can keep systemic antiproliferative drugs from entering the capillary networks in the tissue. As a result, many proliferative diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy do not respond well to systemic drug administration. State-of-the-art polymeric-based drug delivery systems can be intraocularly injected to provide localized treatment but does not provide exact dose and temporal control. Antiproliferative drugs such as doxorubicine and antisense oligonucleotides have been shown to be promising in treating proliferative diseases. However, the low cellular uptake of the drugs keeps them from being fully successful. This proposal responds to the need for an engineering device that provides controlled and highly efficient delivery of drugs. The primary goal in this exploratory stage is to develop and demonstrate a micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) based drug delivery device that (1) controls the release of drugs from the micro device and (2) increases the cell uptake of the agents using an on-chip ultrasound actuator.