抄録
Intratracheal instillation (ITI) has become a feasible alternative method for delivering an airborne material into the lung of rodents. This method is also simpler and safer than the inhalation method. Furthermore, since ITI is possible to perform the experiment with various doses of test article, it is used as a screen to determine an appropriate dose range for inhalation toxicity studies and for efficacy study of inhaled drug. In general, endotracheal intubation method and surgical method have been used to deliver test articles into the lung, but these methods are difficult to perform due to various reasons such as non-uniform distribution of the test materials, long instillation time, low success rate, high mortality, and high proficiency. With the objective of reducing the difficulty and complexity of the ITI procedure, we developed a visual instillobot for ITI by direct visualization of the tracheal opening in the rodents. We estimated instillation time by ITI of bleomycin (BLM, n=20) and polyhexamethyleneguanidine phosphate (PHMG, n=20) using a visual instillobot in the 40 isoflurane-anesthetized mice. As a result, the total instillation time of the ITI procedure was about 25 min (n=20) and only ITI time (except anesthesia) was less than 15 seconds per mouse. These results suggested that the visual instillobot could be used for rapid, stable, accurate and successful ITI of a test compound into the lungs and be utilized as a new method for ITI in the rodents.
まとめ：Visual Instillobotを用いた気道内投与法は、迅速かつ正確な投与が可能なため吸入試験分野で新たな気道内投与法として活用することができるものと考えられる。
