ReviewUltrasound in medicine & biology2012
Can ultrasound enable efficient intracellular uptake of molecules? A retrospective literature review and analysis.
Review in Ultrasound in medicine & biology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbubble-free mechanical sonoporation for MR-guided drug delivery in solid tumours: a proof-of-concept study.Drug delivery and translational research · 2026Article
- LED-Modulated Plasmoporation for Highly Efficient Intracellular Cargo Delivery to Suspension Cells.Nano letters · 2026Article
- Microfluidic Devices for Manufacture of Therapeutic Extracellular Vesicles: Advances and Opportunities.Journal of extracellular vesicles · 2025Review
- The molecular impact of sonoporation: A transcriptomic analysis of gene regulation profile.Ultrasonics sonochemistry · 2024Article
- Basic Principles of RNA Interference: Nucleic Acid Types and In Vitro Intracellular Delivery Methods.Micromachines · 2023Review
- The cellular response to plasma membrane disruption for nanomaterial delivery.Nano convergence · 2022Review
- Sonoporation: Past, Present, and Future.Advanced materials technologies · 2022Article
- Ultrasound-Mediated Drug Delivery: Sonoporation Mechanisms, Biophysics, and Critical Factors.BME frontiers · 2022Review
- Applications of Ultrasound-Mediated Drug Delivery and Gene Therapy.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Microfluidic and Nanofluidic Intracellular Delivery.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2021Review
- Sonoporation generates downstream cellular impact after membrane resealing.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Serum Protects Cells and Increases Intracellular Delivery of Molecules by Nanoparticle-Mediated Photoporation.International journal of nanomedicine · 2021Article
- Instant labeling of therapeutic cells for multimodality imaging.Theranostics · 2020Article
- Article
- Control of Acoustic Cavitation for Efficient Sonoporation with Phase-Shift Nanoemulsions.Ultrasound in medicine & biology · 2019Article
- Photoacoustic transfection of DNA encoding GFP.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Advanced physical techniques for gene delivery based on membrane perforation.Drug delivery · 2018Review
- Intracellular Delivery by Membrane Disruption: Mechanisms, Strategies, and Concepts.Chemical reviews · 2018Review
- Energy Transfer Mechanisms during Molecular Delivery to Cells by Laser-Activated Carbon Nanoparticles.Biophysical journal · 2017Article
- Effect of a Flexible Linker on Recombinant Expression of Cell-Penetrating Peptide Fusion Proteins and Their Translocation into Fungal Cells.Molecular biotechnology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Most applications of therapeutic ultrasound (US) for intracellular delivery of drugs, proteins, DNA/RNA and other compounds would benefit from efficient uptake of these molecules into large numbers of cells without killing cells in the process. In this study we tested the hypothesis that efficient intracellular uptake of molecules can be achieved with high cell viability after US exposure in vitro. A search of the literature for studies with quantitative data on uptake and viability yielded 26 published papers containing 898 experimental data points. Analysis of these studies showed that just 7.7% of the data points corresponded to relatively efficient uptake (>50% of cells exhibiting uptake). Closer examination of the data showed that use of Definity US contrast agent (as opposed to Optison) and elevated sonication temperature at 37°C (as opposed to room temperature) were associated with high uptake, which we further validated through independent experiments carried out in this study. Although these factors contributed to high uptake, almost all data with efficient uptake were from studies that had not accounted for lysed cells when determining cell viability. Based on retrospective analysis of the data, we showed that not accounting for lysed cells can dramatically increase the calculated uptake efficiency. We further argue that if all the data considered in this study were re-analyzed to account for lysed cells, there would be essentially no data with efficient uptake. We therefore conclude that the literature does not support the hypothesis that efficient intracellular uptake of molecules can be achieved with high cell viability after US exposure in vitro, which poses a challenge to future applications of US that require efficient intracellular delivery.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.