Drug Delivery and Targeting (Track)





COMPUTER SIMULATIONS BASED OPTIMIZATION OF MAGNETIC DRUG TARGETING AND DELIVERY IN PATIENT SPECIFIC VASCULAR GEOMETRIES

S. Kenjeres

Transport Phenomena Section, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Julianalaan 136, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract:

Magnetic Drug Targeting (MDT) is a medical technique that makes it possible to locally enhance the concentration of the medical drug in the proximity of diseased site. This is achieved by affecting the magnetically sensitive carriers of the medical drug by an imposed magnetic field gradient. This localized cancer treatment can significantly reduce negative side effects of aggressive medical treatments. Pre-clinical and clinical studies of the MDT technique on human patients demonstrated potentials of such an approach, see e.g. Lubbe et al. (1996a, 1996b), Arnold et al. (2006).

Computer simulations can provide detailed information regarding the local distributions of the medical drug injected in a vascular system (blood stream) and carried by magnetic particles (nano-size particles with a magnetic core).  Here, we combine computational fluid dynamics and magnetic field simulations, which are able to mimic a patient specific vascular geometries subjected to an externally imposed magnetic gradients. Potentials of a such an approach are demonstrated on carotid artery (the major artery connecting heart and brain) and brain vascular system (the circle of Willis) cases.

We found that magnetic targeting can significantly increase the local deposition efficiency of the medical drug in the targeted regions (up to ten fold increase is reported for the carotid artery and up to three fold increase for the brain vascular system). We conclude that computer simulations are powerful tool for further advancements and design of the patient specific cancer treatment by magnetic drug targeting technique.