It can be difficult to get drugs to disease sites along the gastrointestinal tract, which spans the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestine, and anus. Invasive treatments can take hours as patients wait for adequate amounts of drugs to be absorbed at the right location. The same problem is holding back newer treatments like gene-altering therapies.
Now the MIT spinout Suono Bio is advancing a new approach that uses ultrasound to deliver drugs, including nucleic acids like DNA and RNA, to the GI tract more effectively. The company believes its technology can be used to get a broad array of therapeutic molecules into the areas of the body that have proven most difficult to drug.
