In addition to its populist role in medical imaging, ultrasound has also found initial success in drug delivery applications through the sonoporation phenomenon.
Our current scientific understanding of sonoporation is however quite green. Perhaps paradoxically, even the membrane dynamics involved in the process have not been characterized.
Through extensive collaborations with cell biologists, our lab has sought to build foundational bridges to the “ABC” of sonoporation. In particular, we have demonstrated that sonoporation is a highly dynamic course of action with distinct periods of pore formation and resealing.
We also discovered that membrane resealing is by no means a definite event; even if resealing is successful, cellular functioning may still be stressed by the sonoporation process. By actively priming the biophysical foundations in sonoporation, we hope to foster rational use of this membrane perforation technique in biomedical applications, and in turn, substantiate the versatile role of ultrasound in biomedicine.