Abstract
Blood-brain barrier restricts the transport of molecules between blood and brain parenchyma. Although blood-brain barrier is required to protect the brain from an invasion of harmful molecules, it is also an obstacle in the drug delivery to treat the disease in the brain. Therefore, several drug delivery systems are tried to be developed for efficient drug delivery to the brain. Recently, it has taken much attention that the combination of ultrasound and microbubbles, which is an ultrasound contrast agent, to increase the permeability of blood brain barrier. Ultrasound exposure induces the compression and expansion of microbubbles, and the mechanical behavior of microbubbles affects endothelial cells in the brain, resulting in enhancing the permeability of blood-brain barrier. It has been reported that the optimized ultrasound condition and characteristics of microbubble achieved less-invasive and efficient drug delivery to the brain. In this review, we introduce our study for brain targeted drug delivery using the combination of ultrasound and microbubbles and describe the current studies and prospects.
