Cargando…

Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes

Electroporation is a physical method to increase permeabilization of cell membrane by electrical pulses. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can potentially act like “lighting rods” or exhibit direct physical force on cell membrane under alternating electromagnetic fields thus reducing the required field streng...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wang, Lijun, Liu, Dun, Zhou, Ru, Wang, Zhigang, Cuschieri, Alfred
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4424994/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25822874
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16046890
_version_ 1782370417549246464
author Wang, Lijun
Liu, Dun
Zhou, Ru
Wang, Zhigang
Cuschieri, Alfred
author_facet Wang, Lijun
Liu, Dun
Zhou, Ru
Wang, Zhigang
Cuschieri, Alfred
author_sort Wang, Lijun
collection PubMed
description Electroporation is a physical method to increase permeabilization of cell membrane by electrical pulses. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can potentially act like “lighting rods” or exhibit direct physical force on cell membrane under alternating electromagnetic fields thus reducing the required field strength. A cell poration/ablation system was built for exploring these effects of CNTs in which two-electrode sets were constructed and two perpendicular electric fields could be generated sequentially. By applying this system to breast cancer cells in the presence of multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs), the effective pulse amplitude was reduced to 50 V/cm (main field)/15 V/cm (alignment field) at the optimized pulse frequency (5 Hz) of 500 pulses. Under these conditions instant cell membrane permeabilization was increased to 38.62%, 2.77-fold higher than that without CNTs. Moreover, we also observed irreversible electroporation occurred under these conditions, such that only 39.23% of the cells were viable 24 h post treatment, in contrast to 87.01% cell viability without presence of CNTs. These results indicate that CNT-enhanced electroporation has the potential for tumour cell ablation by significantly lower electric fields than that in conventional electroporation therapy thus avoiding potential risks associated with the use of high intensity electric pulses.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4424994
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2015
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-44249942015-05-20 Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes Wang, Lijun Liu, Dun Zhou, Ru Wang, Zhigang Cuschieri, Alfred Int J Mol Sci Article Electroporation is a physical method to increase permeabilization of cell membrane by electrical pulses. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can potentially act like “lighting rods” or exhibit direct physical force on cell membrane under alternating electromagnetic fields thus reducing the required field strength. A cell poration/ablation system was built for exploring these effects of CNTs in which two-electrode sets were constructed and two perpendicular electric fields could be generated sequentially. By applying this system to breast cancer cells in the presence of multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs), the effective pulse amplitude was reduced to 50 V/cm (main field)/15 V/cm (alignment field) at the optimized pulse frequency (5 Hz) of 500 pulses. Under these conditions instant cell membrane permeabilization was increased to 38.62%, 2.77-fold higher than that without CNTs. Moreover, we also observed irreversible electroporation occurred under these conditions, such that only 39.23% of the cells were viable 24 h post treatment, in contrast to 87.01% cell viability without presence of CNTs. These results indicate that CNT-enhanced electroporation has the potential for tumour cell ablation by significantly lower electric fields than that in conventional electroporation therapy thus avoiding potential risks associated with the use of high intensity electric pulses. MDPI 2015-03-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4424994/ /pubmed/25822874 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16046890 Text en © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Lijun
Liu, Dun
Zhou, Ru
Wang, Zhigang
Cuschieri, Alfred
Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title_full Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title_fullStr Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title_full_unstemmed Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title_short Tumour Cell Membrane Poration and Ablation by Pulsed Low-Intensity Electric Field with Carbon Nanotubes
title_sort tumour cell membrane poration and ablation by pulsed low-intensity electric field with carbon nanotubes
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4424994/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25822874
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16046890
work_keys_str_mv AT wanglijun tumourcellmembraneporationandablationbypulsedlowintensityelectricfieldwithcarbonnanotubes
AT liudun tumourcellmembraneporationandablationbypulsedlowintensityelectricfieldwithcarbonnanotubes
AT zhouru tumourcellmembraneporationandablationbypulsedlowintensityelectricfieldwithcarbonnanotubes
AT wangzhigang tumourcellmembraneporationandablationbypulsedlowintensityelectricfieldwithcarbonnanotubes
AT cuschierialfred tumourcellmembraneporationandablationbypulsedlowintensityelectricfieldwithcarbonnanotubes