Compositions, methods and systems for gas vesicle based cavitation
AssigneeCalifornia Institute of Technology
InventorsAvinoam D. Bar-Zion, Atousa Nourmahnad, David Maresca, Mikhail Shapiro
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The system and process of therapeutic and effective cavitation by using ultrasound to collapse gas vesicles as well as cavitate the bubbles produced from the collapsed gas vesicles. Therapeutic effect includes, but is not limited to lysing cells by cavitation. The cells expressing the gas vesicles can optionally be used as delivery cells to preform tasks such as transporting the gas vesicles into deep tissue areas, releasing compounds at the cavitation site, and more. The gas vesicles can optionally be modified to facilitate getting the bubbles near the cavitation targets by functionalizing the gas vesicles.
Claims27
An ultrasound pressure-based method comprising:
- delivering a gas vesicle (GV) to a target site, the GV having a GV type collapse threshold pressure;
- setting an ultrasound generation system to produce ultrasound pulses having a positive pressure set above the GV type collapse threshold pressure and a negative pressure;
- and
- applying the ultrasound pulses to the target site, thus:
- collapsing the GV by the positive pressure of the ultrasound pulses, thereby forming gas bubbles;
- and
- driving cavitation of the gas bubbles by the negative pressure.
A method of applying a mechanical stress to a cavitation target in a target site, the method comprising:
- delivering to the target site containing the cavitation target one or more gas vesicles (GVs) having a GV type collapse threshold, the delivering positioning the GVs in proximity of the cavitation target, and
- applying ultrasound pulses to the target site after the delivering, the ultrasound pulses having a positive pressure set above the GV type collapse threshold pressure and a negative pressure and being selected to both collapse the GV type and to, by the negative pressure, cavitate bubbles created by the GVs after collapse, the cavitated bubbles applying the mechanical stress to the cavitation target.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.