Treating Chronic Disease with Ultrasound

Photo of Nadine Barrie Smith

Penn State is attacking diabetes on a number of fronts - in the doctor's office, the lab, in what are called lifestyle or behavioral modifications, and, not least, through engineering and technological approaches. Today, diabetes cannot be cured, but it can be controlled. For many diabetics this means careful monitoring of their blood glucose level with painful finger pricks to test for blood sugar and needle injections of insulin as often as four times a day. This combination of finger pricks and injections makes maintenance of their disease a major compliance issue for diabetics.

One answer is being researched in the Therapeutic Ultrasound Applications Laboratory of Nadine Barrie Smith. Using a Penn State patented ultrasound technology, Smith has developed a device that she believes is capable of delivering therapeutically effective doses of insulin, and other medications, through the skin barrier without needles. The skin is a formidable barrier to the relatively large molecules in most therapeutic drugs. Low frequency ultrasound creates microbubbles in the skin that disrupt the lipid bilayer of the cell walls, allowing water channels to form that can carry the drug through the stratum corneum, the skin’s toughest layer.

"The major drawback in exploiting ultrasound for transdermal drug delivery so far has been the size and lack of mobility of the commercial ultrasound devices," says Smith. The powerful ultrasound transducers developed by Robert Newnham at Penn State are small; an array of 9 transducers measures only about 2 1/4 inches on a side and weighs less than an ounce. An electric current activates a piezoelectric ceramic that produces the ultrasound wave that drives the drug through the skin The process takes about five minutes. In the future, a diabetic might be able to wear a patch against the skin that delivers a drug, like a nicotine patch.

Nadine Barrie Smith, Ph.D., is associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering.

This research brief was featured in the brochure Biomedical Materials.