Editorial Page 1 of 2 Intra-luminal focused ultrasound for augmentation of gastrointestinal drug delivery Ezekiel Maloney1, Joo Ha Hwang2 1Department of Radiology, 2Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Correspondence to: Joo Ha Hwang, MD, PhD. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Box 359773, 325 Ninth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104, USA. Email:
[email protected]. Provenance: This is a Guest Editorial commissioned by Section Editor Hui Kong, MD, PhD (Department of Respiratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China). Comment on: Schoellhammer CM, Schroeder A, Maa R, et al. Ultrasound-mediated gastrointestinal drug delivery. Sci Transl Med 2015;7:310ra168. Submitted Feb 01, 2017. Accepted for publication Feb 06, 2017. doi: 10.21037/atm.2017.03.42 View this article at: http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/atm.2017.03.42 The recent article by Schoellhammer et al., “Ultrasound- intensity ultrasound frequencies followed by quantification mediated gastrointestinal drug delivery” primarily of delivery of permeants (e.g., glucose, dextran, insulin). addresses practical limitations in drug delivery for medical Treated tissues showed enhanced transport. Similar management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and findings were demonstrated in small and large bowel tissue presents pre-clinical data demonstrating that intra- for radiolabeled mesalamine and hydrocortisone. With 1 luminal, sub-ablative focused ultrasound (FUS), delivered minute of ultrasound treatment time, 3–5-fold improved via a trans-rectal transducer, can overcome some of these drug delivery was observed versus control. Additional limitations (1). The clinical application and benefit of such a ex vivo experiments utilizing variable FUS protocols to device is clear.