Sanku Mallik, professor of pharmaceutical sciences, and Kausik Sarkar, University of Delaware, received a three-year, $587,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for developing liposomes that can be used for enzyme inhibition and simultaneous imaging.
Mallik will prepare liposomes that are echogenic, containing gases that would reflect ultrasound and show up in ultrasound images. Ultrasound uses a pulsing high frequency sound beyond the upper limit of human hearing to peer into the body and provide images. Subsequently, the liposomes will simultaneously encapsulate enzyme inhibitors and air.
According to Mallik, this will enable accurate ultrasound diagnosis of the disease while, at the same time, the reaction with the enzymes would release the contained drug to only the target tissue.