| 초록 |
Microbubbles (MBs) are widely used as ultrasound contrast agent and has been actively investigated as drug carriers. However, the short half-life in blood stream of MBs is a bottleneck in ultrasound diagnosis and drug delivery. The exosome, a type of extracellular vesicles released from cells, has a stable membrane. In this study, exosome-embedded microbubbles (Exo-MBs) were developed to overcome the low stability of MBs by embedding the exosome membrane proteins into MBs. As a result, the stability of Exo-MBs is improved over the conventional MBs. On the same principle that microbubbles are cavitated and self-assembled into liposomes under the exposure of ultrasound, Exo-MBs are also self-assembled into exosome-embedded liposomes (Exo-Lipos). The Exo-Lipos showed favorable accumulation properties for the target cells because of the enhanced stability from exosome membrane proteins. As a result, the improved stability of Exo-MBs enhanced the efficacy of cancer diagnosis and treatment. |
