Researchers want to use sound waves to move drugs in the body
Published: Tuesday, Jun 25th 2024, 16:20
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In an experiment, researchers used sound waves to navigate objects through an obstacle course under water. The Swiss scientists want to use this method to deliver drugs to the right place in the body in future.
However, before drugs can actually be transported in humans using sound waves, the researchers need to test the method on smaller objects, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
So far, sound wave control has been tested on a ping-pong ball and an origami flower. Acoustic sound waves emitted from loudspeakers at both ends of the pool guided the objects in a pool of water along a predetermined path.
At the same time, microphones recorded the feedback of the sound waves. This feedback occurs when the sound waves hit the ball and are scattered. This enabled them to calculate exactly in which direction and how strong the next sound wave had to be in order to move the ball further along its predetermined path.
Directly to tumor cells
As the researchers noted in the journal "Nature Physics", the tests were successful. In the next step, they want to use sound waves to move cells.
"Some drug delivery methods already use sound waves to release encapsulated drugs. This makes this technique particularly attractive for delivering a drug directly to tumor cells, for example," EPFL researcher Romain Fleury was quoted as saying in the press release.
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