Effect of different injection strategies considering intravenous injection on combination therapy of magnetic hyperthermia and thermosensitive liposomes

Abstract The combination therapy of magnetic hyperthermia and thermosensitive liposomes (TSL) is an emerging and effective cancer treatment method. The heat generation of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) due to an external alternating magnetic field can not only directly damage tumor cells, but also serves as a triggering factor for the release of doxorubicin from TSL. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects in the degree of tumor cell damage of two proposed injection strategies that consider intravenous administration. Since both MNPs and TSL enter the tumor region intravenously, this study establishes a biological geometric model based on an experiment-based vascular distribution. Furthermore, this study derives the flow velocity of interstitial fluid after coupling the pressure distribution inside blood vessels and the pressure distribution of interstitial fluid, which then provides the convective velocity for the calculation of subsequent nanoparticle concentration. Different injection strategies for the proposed approach are evaluated by drug delivery result, temperature distribution, and tumor cell damage. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed delayed injection strategy after optimization can not only result in a wider distribution for MNPs and TSL due to the sufficient diffusion time, but also improves the distribution of the temperature and drug concentration fields for the overall efficacy of combination therapy.