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SIMULATION DOMAIN
•The simulation domain is presented in Figure 1.
•The membrane voltage is studied in the intracellular region shown in Figure 2.
C. Lazarou, C. Anastassiou and G. E. Georghiou
FOSS Research Centre for Sustainable Energy, Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus
CONCLUSIONS
•A methodology that allows for the study of the MV as a function of time is developed
for the first time.
•The membrane voltage is above the electroporation threshold (>0.1 V) only for the
first normal cell in the stratum granulosum and the first cancerous cell thus providing
the possibility of achieving electroporation with the means of plasma process.
•The membrane voltage is higher in the centre of the cells and therefore cells are more
likely to undergo electroporation in the centre than on the edges.
•The membrane voltage (and therefore the cell permeability) does not drop to zero
immediately after the direct contact of plasma bullet with the skin.
RESULTS The membrane voltage created in the centre and the edge of the cells
during the increase of the intracellular electric field is presented in Figure 3 and 4
respectively.
This work was supported by the European Union under Horizon 2020, MSCA-IF-2016,
grant number 703497.
METHODOLOGY In order to study the cellular MV and keep our simulation
time manageable we first simulate the interaction with average tissue electrical
properties and then we zoom in to the cellular level. Specifically we follow these steps:
1. A plasma fluid model consisting of 13 species (e, He+,He2+, N2+, N4+, O2+, O4+, O2-
,He, Hem,He2, N2, O2)and 25 reaction channels is used to create the plasma jet
[1].
2. The jet is launched onto the healthy and the cancerous skin using average
electrical properties. Specifically the healthy skin is composed of the epidermis and
the dermis as shown in Figure 1. The epidermis is further divided into four sub
layers: the stratum basalis, the stratum spinosum, the stratum granulosum, and the
stratum corneum. The skin affected by cancer is composed of the stratum corneum
and a layer of melanoma [2].
3. The voltage drop across the healthy and cancerous skin along the axi-symmetric
axis is obtained and fed to a new model that considers the analytical intracellular
structure (shown in Figure 2).
4. Through the new model the MV is obtained for the first three healthy cells and the
first cancerous cell (which corresponds to ~65 mmof depth).
Figure 3: Simulated membrane voltage in the centre of the cell.
INTRODUCTION Plasma interacts with tissue via the built up of an electric field
and the introduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The increase of the electric
field in the intracellular region highly affects the cell’s permeability through the
increase of the trans-membrane voltage (MV). Here a two dimensional axi-symmetric
plasma fluid model in direct contact with normal and cancerous skin is used to
compare the MV of normal and cancerous cells. This comparison might shed light in
the differences in behaviour of cancerous versus normal cells under plasma energy
recorded in recent research literature.
Figure 1: Simulation domain.
Figure 2: Analytical intracellular structure.
Figure 4: Simulated membrane voltage in the edge of the cell.
REFERENCE
[1] C. Lazarou, D. Koukounis, A. S. Chiper, C. Costin, I. Topala and G. E. Georghiou,
Plasma Sources Sci. Technol., 24 035012 (2015)
[2] A. E. Hartinger, R. Guardo, V. Kokta and H. Gagnon, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., 57
780-788 (2010)
Numerical investigation of the electric field produced by the
interaction of helium plasma jet with normal and cancerous cells