Drug Delivery Using an Embedded Ferromagnetic Needle and External Magnets

Side-effects and lowering effects by diffusion of drugs such as anticancer agents is one of the serious issues in medication. To solve the problem, it is necessary to control the drugs quantitatively, spatially and temporally within the human body. Magnetic drug delivery system (MDDS) is one of the technologies that would make it possible, in which the ferromagnetic drug injected into the blood vessel is conducted to diseased part by external magnetic force. The ultimate goal of our study is to develop MDDS which can be used to guide the drug to the diseased part by controlling its movements from outside of human body using superconducting bulk magnet and ferromagnetic needle, and fundamental experiments to establish the MDDS system was conducted. To estimate the magnetic force required to accumulate ferromagnetic particle in blood vessel, particle distribution in the limited biomedical tissue was calculated. To check the validity of calculation, accumulation experiment of ferromagnetic particle in a model tissue consisting of glass beads packed in a glass tube was conducted. Based on these results, design of MDDS using permanent magnet system with facing two poles in a glass tube was conducted.