Ultrasound-mediated destruction of oxygen and paclitaxel loaded lipid microbubbles for combination therapy in hypoxic ovarian cancer cells

•We prepared an oxygen and PTX loaded lipid microbubbles (OPLMBs) for ultrasound mediated combination therapy in hypoxic ovarian cancer cells.•Ultrasound induced OPLMBs destruction significantly enhanced the local oxygen release.•Ultrasound-mediated combination therapy could effectively increase anti-proliferative activities and induce cell apoptosis.

We synthesized oxygen and paclitaxel (PTX) loaded lipid microbubbles (OPLMBs) for ultrasound mediated combination therapy in hypoxic ovarian cancer cells. Our experiments successfully demonstrated that ultrasound induced OPLMBs destruction significantly enhanced the local oxygen release. We also demonstrated that OPLMBs in combination with ultrasound (300 kHz, 0.5 W/cm2, 15 s) yielded anti-proliferative activities of 52.8 ± 2.75% and cell apoptosis ratio of 35.25 ± 0.17% in hypoxic cells at 24 h after the treatment, superior to other treatment groups such as PTX only and PTX-loaded MBs (PLMBs) with or without ultrasound mediation. RT-PCR and Western blot tests further confirmed the reduced expression of HIF-1α and MDR-1/P-gp after ultrasound mediation of OPLMBs. Our experiment suggests that ultrasound mediation of oxygen and drug-loaded MBs may be a useful method to overcome chemoresistance in the hypoxic ovarian cancer cells.