Steering Magnetic Nanoparticles with Moving Magnetic Fields – A Feasibility Study

Abstract

Magnetic drug targeting (MDT) uses magnetic nanoparticles as carrier for cancer drugs. In classical MDT, these nanoparticles are injected in the vicinity of the tumor and accumulated at the tumor region by using external magnetic fields. In addition, in current research the magnetic steering of the nanoparticles through the cardiovascular system towards the tumor region is discussed. However, a major problem in particle steering is that numerous particles deposit themselves on the vessel wall below the steering magnet, which can lead to clogging of the vessel before the tumor area. To overcome this problem, this paper introduces a novel steering approach using moving magnetic fields which propagate parallel to vessel and, thus, along the particle flow direction. The steering system is based on a hybrid linear Halbach array and was numerically compared to a corresponding static scenario using COMSOL Multiphysics. The results revealed that the dynamic steering approach with a 3-phase current system reduced the amount of trapped particles while maintaining the same steering performance in terms of particle distribution. Thus, it can be concluded that the proposed dynamic steering approach shows high potential in enabling novel steering concepts in MDT.