Fantastic Voyage

Written by: Tony Harris, January 29, 2016

Do you remember the movie? Raquel Welch was in it, if that helps. She and four men were ‘miniaturized’ and injected inside a human body to carry out a few ‘repairs’. Fanciful stuff indeed. I mean; how could you miniaturize four guys let alone Raquel, and would you really want to? It certainly seemed a thing of fiction and ridicule.

But imagine putting a drug inside a small vehicle, injecting it into a human body and then when it gets to the part of the body that needs the drug, it is activated. Then a mechanism pushes the drug into the tissue that needs treatment. Fanciful stuff indeed.

But that is what Dr. Christian Coviello and his colleagues are doing at Oxsonics. I was fortunate to meet with Christian, Dr. Sean Finn and Dr. Edward Jackson, last week and they explained to me their version of the Fantastic Voyage.

Sonotran is their invention. It enables one to deliver cancer drugs to solid tumors. The drug is transported in a microscopic ‘cup’ and when it reaches the tumor to be treated, is activated by ultrasound. The mechanism of cavitation actually pushes the drug into the tumor. Tumors grow quickly and have a positive pressure, but the effect of cavitation overcomes this pressure and enables the drug to be delivered where it is needed.   

It was great to have a tour of the Oxsonics facility and see the work that they are doing. I could not have been more intrigued. Well, unless perhaps Raquel Welch had been there.