I-Corps: Ultrasound-Enhanced Drug Delivery for Treatment of Onychomycosis

I-Corps：超声增强药物输送治疗甲癣

• 批准号: 1834830
• 负责人: Vesna Zderic
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-01 至 2019-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1834830&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Ultrasound; Enhanced; Drug; Delivery

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is treating onychomycosis for the millions of people around the world who are suffering from this painful and dangerous disease. Onychomycosis, or toenail fungus, has been shown to cause significant psychosocial issues and lead to dangerous medical complications. Currently, onychomycosis is treated topically, but these drugs are unable to permeate the nail and therefore are unable to reach and treat the fungus. Our technology has found success using ultrasound to increase the delivery of the drug to the nailbed. The onychomycosis market is estimated to be $3.1B with an 8.3% growth rate. Additionally, our technology may potentially have applications in podiatry, the nail salon market and as well as direct-to-customer markets. This I-Corps project utilizes therapeutic ultrasound for improving treatment success of onychomycosis. Due to poor nail permeation, the most commonly used topical drug has a cure rate of only 36% after 6 months of daily application. The research group has performed tests in both porcine and human nails and these tests found that ultrasound increases nail permeation by up to 6 times. Safety modeling studies found that the application of therapeutic ultrasound to the toe is safe. The laboratory identified the likely mechanisms of ultrasound action of drug delivery through the nail to be cavitation-induced pits production in the nail surface and streaming which causes the movement of fluid within a localized area.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为世界各地数百万患有这种痛苦和危险疾病的人治疗甲癣。甲真菌病或脚趾甲真菌已被证明会导致严重的心理社会问题并导致危险的医疗并发症。目前，甲真菌病是局部治疗，但这些药物无法渗透指甲，因此无法达到和治疗真菌。我们的技术已经成功地使用超声波来增加药物向甲床的输送。甲真菌病市场估计为31亿美元，增长率为8.3%。 此外，我们的技术可能会在足科、美甲沙龙市场以及直接面向客户的市场中得到应用。 这个I-Corps项目利用治疗性超声来提高甲真菌病的治疗成功率。由于指甲渗透性差，最常用的外用药物在每天应用6个月后的治愈率仅为36%。研究小组在猪和人的指甲上进行了测试，这些测试发现超声波使指甲渗透增加了6倍。安全性建模研究发现，治疗性超声应用于脚趾是安全的。该实验室确定了药物通过指甲的超声波作用的可能机制是在指甲表面产生空化诱导的凹坑和流动，导致局部区域内的流体运动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。