Modeling magnetic drug delivery inside blood vessels
Magnetic nanoparticles can deliver and control the release of therapeutic anticancer drugs, targeting specific, hard-to-reach microniches in the body and reducing side effects by lowering dosages.
Targeted magnetic drug delivery depends on careful manipulation of the size, surface properties, and number of magnetic nanoparticles, as well as the release of the therapeutic agents. The wrong combination of these parameters may result in undesirable side effects.
To help optimize treatment using magnetic nanoparticles, Gul et al. presented a computational model of the navigation of magnetic nanoparticles coated with anticancer drugs inside blood vessels.
“The medical system must balance the severity of the disease and the possible side effects,” said author Stanislav Makhanov. “Given that, currently, the experience of targeted magnetic drug delivery is limited, the use of mathematical modeling to analyze different scenarios is indispensable.”
The model includes the hemodynamics, or hydrodynamics of the blood, the magnetic field, the vorticity of the flow, the elasticity of the blood vessels, and the temperature of the system. Unlike other similar work, it includes not only the impact of the blood flow on the magnetic nanoparticles, but also the opposite effects.
When compared to available experimental data, the accuracy of the model ranges from 95 to 97%. Interestingly, the team observed that large magnetic nanoparticles, which are most efficient in terms of drug delivery, may create undesirable vorticity and temperature increases in blood flow.
“Our short-term plans are to verify the model on new experimental data and improve the computational efficiency of the model,” said Makhanov.
Source: “Simulation of targeted magnetic drug delivery: Two-way coupled biomagnetic fluid dynamics approach,” by Aaiza Gul, Efstratios E. Tzirtzilakis, and Stanislav S. Makhanov, Physics of Fluids (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0080216 .