EXAMINING THE BIOPHYSICS OF ULTRASOUND AND CONTRAST AGENT INDUCED ANGIOGENESIS BY

Ischemic diseases affect more than 100 million people in the United States alone (NDFS 2011, Roger et al. 2011). Current interventions include: ablation, angioplasty, revascularization and bypass surgery. The invasive nature of these techniques excludes patients with who are not amenable to surgical intervention. For this reason, alternative methods of revascularization in ischemic cardiac muscle have been explored. Over the past two decades, cellular, molecular, and genetic therapy attempts have been made in order to find a clinically relevant treatment. Ultimately, it is the invasiveness or lack of site specificity that provides the largest obstacle for therapeutic effectiveness of angiogenic treatments. Current research suggests that ultrasound-ultrasound contrast agent treatment can be therapeutically beneficial, providing a noninvasive way to spatially and temporally target ischemic tissues. This type of angiogenic therapy can be used as an alternative to high risk percutaneous intervention or bypass graft surgery. Several studies report a reparative response to ultrasound-ultrasound contrast agent exposure and state that inertial cavitation, or microbubble collapse, is possibly required for angiogenesis to occur. Numerous small-scale studies hav