Enhancement of blood-brain barrier permeability by the combination of bubble liposomes and high-intensity focused ultrasound

Background/introduction The blood-brain barrier is a major obstacle that prevents therapeutic drugs or genes being delivered into the central nervous systems. Therefore, it is important to develop enabling enhance the permeability of blood-brain barrier (BBB). So far, we have developed echo-contrast gas (C3F8) entrapping liposomes (Bubble liposomes, BLs) which can be work as a gene delivery tool in the combination of ultrasound (US) exposure. Here, we investigated whether the delivery efficiency of intravenously injected large molecular agents can be induced by the combination of BLs and high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU).