Abstract 1318: Mechanochemical dynamic therapy for focal cancer treatment

This study proposes a new cancer drug delivery modality that allows for spatiotemporal control over activation of the therapeutic. Current standard cancer therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy have their limitations, such as invasiveness and systemic toxicities. Developing a new modality that is localized and triggerable is becoming increasingly advantageous. Currently, photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been shown to be clinically effective but is limited by poor tissue penetration of light. Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) bypasses this pitfall with increased tissue penetration depth of ultrasound. However, PDT has limitations as it relies on the potentially damaging ultrasound cavitation effect and requires sonosensitizers or nanoparticles that have issues with bioavailability, biostability, and biosafety. In this study, we propose a novel ultrasound-based cancer treatment modality called mechanochemical dynamic therapy (MDT). In MDT, high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) delivers mechanical forces to force-responsive moieties of azo mechanophores that are embedded into biocompatible polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel polymers. Upon focal sonication with HIFU, these mechanophores generate highly reactive free radicals (FRs) that are converted to reactive oxygen species (ROSs). The sonicated gels are then placed into in vitro cultures, allowing for the diffusion of ROSs into the cells to induce oxidative cytotoxicity and eventually cell death. Cell proliferation is monitored at 24-hour intervals, and by 72 hours, the sonicated gels produced cell killing effects comparable to lethal doses of H2O2 in both in vitro mouse melanoma (B16F10) and breast cancer (E0771) models. Sonication of control hydrogels that did not contain mechanophores showed minimal cytotoxicity. This study shows the potential of MDT as a drug delivery platform that overcomes the limitations of PDT and SDT and has the potential to be applied synergistically with other current cancer treatments. This is the first demonstration of using HIFU-activated mechanophores to non-invasively deliver cancer therapies with spatiotemporal control. Citation Format: Gun Kim, Qiong Wu, James L. Chu, Emily J. Smith, Michael L. Oelze, King C. Li, Jeffrey S. Moore. Mechanochemical dynamic therapy for focal cancer treatment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 1318.