Abstract: Sonophoresis is currently being attempted as a drug delivery method in clinical areas. However, it is difficult to achieve an effective control and satisfy the varying drug dosage requirements of individual patients. To address it, we have developed a series of ultrasound devices that can be applied to transdermal drug delivery or controlled drug release to the mucosa of digestive tract. For examples, we proposed a method aimed at controlling transdermal permeability using a certain sound intensity (≥ 1 W/cm2) with a pressure control strategy. Changing the static pressure from an ultrasonic motor could effectively control the drug permeability of the skin, and the penetration accuracy was increased by about 2 times. We also developed a piezoelectric single-crystal ultrasonic transducer (the diameter was only 2.2 mm and the mass was 0.076 g) to produce acoustic waves, which could promote the drug delivery in the designed position of the digestive tract through an endoscope. In in vitro sonophoresis experiment, the gastric mucosa permeability to Bovine Serum Albumin increased about 5.6 times when the ultrasonic transducer was activated at 40 Vpp and 60% duty ratio, proving that employment of this transducer could facilitate drug penetration in the gastric mucosa. Moreover, a thermally trigger method (40 °C~42 °C) using the above ultrasonic device can largely enhance the drug release speed in the gastric mucosa. Hence, these results hold a great implication for applications of these ultrasonic devices for targeted sonophoresis in the skin or the gastrointestinal tract.
Keywords: Sonophoresis, Drug delivery, Ultrasound Medicine, Piezoelectricity technology

Acknowledgements: This work is supported by the following funding organizations in China: This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51875280), the outstanding Youth Science Foundation of Jiangsu province (Grant No. BK20180067), the Open and the Self-determined Re-search Fund of State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Grant No. MCMS-I-0319Y01), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. NJ2022007).

Biography: Professor Hanmin Peng works at the State Key Lab of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the University of Southern California in 2018. At present, his main research interests are the application and development of piezoelectric robots and actuators in the medical field, including ultrasound targeted drug delivery, rapid response microrobots, etc. He has published more than 40 journal papers, and some of them were reported on the EurekAlert! website and Scilight website by the American Physical Society's (AIP). Currently he is a technical examination reviewer of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, a member of the Micro-Nano Manufacturing Technology Branch of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society, an editorial board member of Journal of Vibration, Measurement & Diagnostics, an IEEE member, a senior member of the Chinese Vibration Society, and a member of the Chinese Acoustical Society. He has funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the outstanding Youth Science Foundation of Jiangsu province, etc. Besides, he has 16 Chinese invention patents.