Targeting Microscale Drug Carriers with Magnetic Field Forces for Local Pharmaceutical Applications in Medicine

摘要

This communication presents an approach onhow medical tumor treatment can benefit from magnetic drug targeting after optimization of the magnetic field distribution. Tumors that cannot be removed by invasive surgery are treated by systemic injection of cytostatic or cytotoxic drugs. To partially reduce the chemotherapy's adverse effects, drugs and superparamagnetic nanoparticles can be enveloped in spherical carriers (beads). To localize the effect of the drugs circulating with the blood stream, magnetic field forces guide the carriers to the point(s) of interest, where they release their payload by inductive heating. In order to optimize the magnetic targeting with respect to field gradients and field plateaus, alternative coil designs have been developed and simulated numerically. The most relevant problem is that the unbound nanoparticles follow the direction of increasing field gradients and concentrate at areas of maximum field strength. This problem can be solved partially with the described coil configuration.