24 Jul 07

Combining sound and bubbles to help treat major killers like stroke and cancer has won £1.25m of funding for Dr Constantin Coussios in Oxford's Institute for Biomedical Engineering.

Dr Coussios will investigate how tiny bubbles created in body tissue under the effect of ultrasound waves can be used to enhance and target drug activity to specific areas in the body.

One of the effects of targeted ultrasound, delivered outside the body and brought to a focus inside it, is the creation of tiny bubbles within body tissue. These are created because any sound wave is simply a pressure disturbance: as pressure falls, bubbles are 'sucked' into being, and as pressure rises, they collapse with a tiny 'pop'.

Depending on their size, these bubbles have the potential to do several things that are useful for targeted treatment of diseases, including intensifying the local heating effect of ultrasound; increasing the permeability of cells to large drug molecules; and enhancing the activity of drugs.

These effects should mean that lower doses of drugs could be used for the same effect, and that drugs could be targeted to very specific sites in the body, such as a blood clot or a tumour. This reduction and localisation of drug use would be important for drugs with severe side effects. Such drugs are central to treatments for cancer, where chemotherapy is not only toxic to cancer cells but healthy cells too, and stroke, where drugs that can break up clots in the brain make the rest of the circulation system more prone to haemorrhage.

The funding is one of seven nationwide EPSRC awards aimed at identifying future research leaders and helping them develop their research groups. The Biomedical Ultrasonics and Biotherapy Laboratory (BUBL), which is lead by Dr Coussios and forms part of the new Institute of Biomedical Engineering, will get the £1.25m over the next five years.

Dr Coussios has also recently been awarded the Institute of Acoustics Young Person's Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering for 2007. The biennial award is designed to recognise excellence and achievement in acoustical engineering among those who are under 35 or are early in industry careers.