Sonodynamic therapy (SDT): a novel strategy for cancer nanotheranostics

Abstract

Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) is a promising non-invasive therapeutic modality. Compared to photo-inspired therapy, SDT provides many opportunities and benefits, including deeper tissue penetration, high precision, less side effects, and good patient compliance. Thanks to the facile engineerable nature of nanotechnology, nanoparticles-based sonosensitizers exhibit predominant advantages, such as increased SDT efficacy, binding avidity, and targeting specificity. This review aims to summarize the possible mechanisms of SDT, which can be expected to provide the theoretical basis for SDT development in the future. We also extensively discuss nanoparticle-assisted sonosensitizers to enhance the outcome of SDT. Additionally, we focus on the potential strategy of combinational SDT with other therapeutic modalities and discuss the limitations and challenges of SDT toward clinical applications.

An in vitro study on sonodynamic treatment of human colon cancer cells using sinoporphyrin sodium as sonosensitizer

“…This technique involves the cytotoxic effects elicited by non-toxic chemical agents preferentially retained in tumor tissue upon exposure to relatively low-intensity ultrasound. Serving as sonosensitizers, the sonoresponsive chemicals combined with ultrasound offer advantages of minimizing adverse effects and maximizing on-target responses, particularly for the non-invasive treatment of less-accessible cancers [3,4]. The ultrasound intensity used for SDT is relatively low, facilitating penetration into deeply seated tumor tissues as compared with photodynamic therapy (PDT), which has limited efficacy owing to the use of laser light [5].…”

ROS‐Responsive Blended Nanoparticles: Cascade‐Amplifying Synergistic Effects of Sonochemotherapy with On‐demand Boosted Drug Release During SDT Process

“…In addition, SDT can be combined with traditional chemotherapy by encapsulating the drugs into these nanoparticles to enhance their therapeutic effects . Although nanocarriers have a broad application potential, the ones used in sonochemotherapy only serve as delivery vehicles . The encapsulated drug kills the cancer cells through various mechanisms, and the sonosensitizer generates ROS to induce apoptosis during SDT…”

Recent advances in nanomaterials for sonodynamic therapy

“…They firstly proposed this concept as sonodynamic therapy (SDT, Scheme 1(a)) [23][24][25][26]. In contrast to the light used in PDT, US has better penetrability in tissue [27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, the ROS production mechanism in SDT has not yet been well indicated.…”