Tomas Garcia-Sanchez

Pompeu Fabra University | UPF · Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC)

Background/Introduction Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is a novel nonthermal cardiac ablation technology based on irreversible electroporation. The behaviour of local electrograms after PFA has been poorly characterized and it remains unknown if it is possible to differentiate between different electroporation levels based on local electrogram analysi...

In recent years, the application of pulsed electric fields with very short durations (nanoseconds) and extremely high amplitudes (MV/m) has been investigated for novel medical purposes. Various electric protocols have been explored for different objectives, including the utilization of fractionated pulse doses to enhance cell electrosensitization t...

Background: Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is a novel nonthermal cardiac ablation technology based on irreversible electroporation (IRE). While areas of IRE lead to durable lesions, the surrounding regions, where reversible electroporation occurs, recover. The behavior of local electrograms in areas of different electroporation levels remains unknown...

Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: Public Institution(s). Main funding source(s): Instituto de Salud Carlos III Background The use of irreversible electroporation (IRE) as a method for cardiac ablation in the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, known as Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA), has rapidly moved from preclinical studies to clinic....

Background The use of irreversible electroporation (IRE) for cardiac ablation in the management of cardiac arrhythmias, known as Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA), has gained the attention of many researchers, physicians and companies. Despite the demonstrated efficacy and safety profiles of the technique, there are still many open questions. One of them...

Background Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is a novel nonthermal cardiac ablation technology based on irreversible electroporation. Unfortunately, the characteristics of the electric field waveforms used in clinical and experimental PFA are not typically reported. This study examines the effect of the frequency of biphasic waveforms and compares biphas...

Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA) has been developed over the last years as a novel electrical ablation technique for treating cardiac arrhythmias. It is based on irreversible electroporation which is a non-thermal phenomenon innocuous to the extracellular matrix and, because of that, PFA is considered to be safer than the reference technique, Radiofrequ...

Background Despite the numerous literature results about biological effects of electromagnetic field exposure, the interaction mechanisms of these fields with organisms are still a matter of debate. Extremely low frequency magnetic fields can modulate redox homeostasis and we showed that 24 hours exposure to 50 Hz-1 mT has a pro-oxidant effect and...

Objective: Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a non thermal tissue ablation therapy which is induced by applying high voltage waveforms across electrode pairs. When multiple electrode pairs are sequentially used, the treatment volume (TV) is typically computed as the geometric union of the TVs of individual pairs. However, this method neglects...

This study compared monophasic 100-μs pulses with high-frequency electroporation (HF-EP) bursts using an in vivo animal model. Myocardial damage was evaluated by histologic analysis. Compared with 10 monophasic pulses, 20 bursts of HF-EP at 100 and 150 kHz were associated with less damage. However, when the number of HF-EP bursts was increased to 6...

The use of conductive nanoparticles (NPs) was previously proposed as a way to locally amplify the electric field (EF) intensity at the cell membrane to enhance cell electroporation. To achieve this, a close distance between the NPs and the cell membrane is mandatory. Here, a new method to improve the contact between NPs and cell surface using the e...

This study presents electrical measurements (both conductivity during the pulses and impedance spectroscopy before and after) performed in liver tissue of mice during electroporation with classical electrochemotherapy conditions (8 pulses of 100 µs duration). A four-needle electrode arrangement inserted in the tissue was used for the measurements....

The permeabilization of the live cells membrane by the delivery of electric pulses has fundamental interest in medicine, in particular in tumors treatment by electrochemotherapy. Since underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood, we studied the impact of electric pulses on the biochemical composition of live cells thanks to label-free opti...

Biomedical applications often require high-performance power supplies for diagnosis and treatment systems. In particular, modern electroporation techniques for cancer treatment require high-voltage generators with versatile waveform generation. In this context, sinusoidal waveform generation has been recently identified as beneficial for electroche...

Mechanisms of how electromagnetic (EM) field acts on biological systems are governed by the same physics regardless of the origin of the EM field (technological, atmospheric...), given that EM parameters are the same. We draw from a large body of literature of bioeffects of a man-made electromagnetic field. In this paper, we performed a focused rev...

This article reviewed the application of IEs to biomedicine, with an emphasis on the practice's potential benefits and necessary collaboration between specialist engineers and medical practitioners. The design of high-voltage generators for electroporation is a challenging task due to the stiff requirements for the voltage amplitude, controllabilit...

Conducive nanoparticles (NPs) were proposed to locally amplify the external electric field (EF) intensity at the cell surface to improve cell electroporation. To better understand the physical mechanisms behind this improvement, different types of NPs and several incubation conditions were applied to adherent cells in the present study. The enhance...

Objective: The purpose of the present work is to assess the ability of sine waves to perform Electrochemotherapy (ECT) and to study the dependence of the frequency of the applied sine wave on the treatment efficacy. Methods: A subcutaneous tumor model in mice was used, and the electric field was delivered in combination with bleomycin. Sinusoida...

When investigating the biophysical effects induced by the interaction between electromagnetic fields and biological cells, it is crucial to estimate the electromagnetic field intensity at the microscopic scale (microdosimetry). This information allows to find a connection between the external applied field and the observed biological event required...

In this study the evolution in the efficiency of electrochemotherapy (reversible electroporation) with pulse number was assessed in vitro. Experiments were performed using 100 μs pulses at different electric field intensities and the chemotherapeutic agent bleomycin. Additionally, electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements were used as a differ...

This paper reports the comparative analysis, by means of electric impedance spectroscopy measurements, of three different cell lines subjected to electroporative pulses. The multifrequency information is recorded simultaneously at 21 frequency values in the range between 5 kHz and 1.3 MHz using a multisine based measuring approach. The analysis of...

The permeabilization of biological membranes by electric fields, known as electroporation, has been traditionally performed with square electric pulses. These signals distribute the energy applied to cells in a wide frequency band. This paper investigates the use of sine waves, which are narrow band signals, to provoke electropermeabilization and t...

The effects of pyroelectricity on cell membrane permeability had never been explored. Pyroelectricity consists in the generation of an electric field in the surface of some materials when a change in temperature is produced. In the present study, tourmaline microparticles, which are known to display pyroelectrical properties, were subjected to diff...

Myocardial electrical impedance is a biophysical property of the heart that is influenced by the intrinsic structural characteristics of the tissue. Therefore, the structural derangements elicited in a chronic myocardial infarction should cause specific changes in the local systolic-diastolic myocardial impedance, but this is not known. This study...

In the present work, electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements were performed during electroporation of C2C12 cells monolayers. The measuring strategy, based on multisine excitations, allows acquiring full impedance spectra at a rate of 1 spectrum/ms during the interval between pulses of a traditional electroporation treatment. The multi...

Myocardial electrical impedance is influenced by the mechanical activity of the heart. Therefore, the ischemia induced mechanical dysfunction may cause specific changes in the systolic-diastolic pattern of myocardial impedance but this is not known. This study aimed to analyze the phasic changes of myocardial resistivity in normal and ischemic cond...

In the present work, electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements were performed during electroporation of C2C12 cells monolayers. The measuring strategy, based on multisine excitations, allows acquiring full impedance spectra at a rate of 1 spectrum/ms during the interval between pulses of a traditional electroporation treatment. The multi...

In this study, the electrical impedance of myocardial tissue is measured dynamically during the cardial cycle. The multisine-based approach used to perform electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements allows acquiring complete spectral impedance information of the tissue dynamics during contraction. Measurements are performed in situ in the...

In this study, electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements are performed during electroporation of monolayers of differentiated myotubes. The time resolution of the system (1spectrum/ms) enable 860 full spectra (21 frequencies from 5kHz to 1.3MHz) to be acquired during the time gap between consecutive pulses (interpulse) of a classical electropo...

The aim of this study is to use fast electrical impedance spectroscopy to measure the process of electroporation applied on cell monolayers growing attached to a specifically designed set of microelectrodes. The frequency response of the impedance can provide useful information about the extent of permeabilization in the cell membranes exposed to h...

In this study, a new microelectrode assembly based on spiral geometry applicable to in situ electroporation of adherent cell monolayers on standard multiwell plates is presented. Furthermore, the structure is specially conceived to perform electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements during electroporation. Its performance for cell membrane...

In this study, in situ electroporation is applied to adherent cell monolayers growing on standard multiwell plates. A new microelectrode assembly based on spiral geometry and fabricated using standard PCB tecnology with slight modifications is used. The system was tested in the electroporation of two different cell lines (CHO and HEK 293). A fluore...

In this study an automatic system is presented to perform electroporation, also known as electropermeabilization, on adherent cells. It is an intention of this system to apply electric field pulses directly to cells growing in standard multi-well plates as a step forward to include this technique in standard laboratory protocols. An interdigitated...

In situ electroporation of adherent cells provides significant advantages with respect to electroporation systems for suspension cells, such as causing minimal stress to cultured cells and simplifying and saving several steps within the process. In this study, a new electrode assembly design is shown and applied to in situ electroporate adherent ce...