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

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力正在为世界各地数百万患有这种痛苦和危险的疾病的人治疗甲真菌病。甲真菌病，或趾甲真菌病，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的，但这些药物无法渗透到指甲中，因此无法接触和治疗真菌。我们的技术已经成功地利用超声波增加了药物到甲床的输送。据估计，甲真菌病市场规模为31亿美元，增长率为8.3%。此外，我们的技术可能在足科、美甲沙龙市场以及直接面向客户的市场中有潜在的应用。这个i-Corps项目利用治疗性超声波来提高甲真菌病的治疗成功率。由于指甲渗透性差，最常用的外用药物每天使用6个月后治愈率仅为36%。该研究小组在猪和人的指甲上进行了测试，这些测试发现，超声波使指甲的渗透率增加了6倍。安全模型研究发现，将治疗性超声波应用于脚趾是安全的。实验室确定了通过指甲传递药物的超声波作用的可能机制是指甲表面产生空穴和流动，导致局部区域内的液体流动。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.