Suppression Technique of HeLa Cell Proliferation Using Ultrasonic Power Amplifiers Integrated with a Series-Diode Linearizer

A series-diode linearizer scheme is developed, which can possibly generate higher voltage signals. To verify our proposed concept, ultrasonic power amplifiers with and without the linearizer were tested for HeLa cells proliferation in vitro. In general, ultrasonic stimulus initiates the process of cavitation which can cause cell lysis and disruption of cell attachment. The cavitation can also induce formation of free radicals so that a rigid membrane of malignant cancer cells have increased sensitivity to ultrasonic stimulus. The cell density of the control group increased up to almost 100% on Day 3. However, cell densities of the experimental group when using an isolated ultrasonic power amplifier, and ultrasonic power amplifiers integrated with the linearizer at 1 V and 5 V DC (direct current) bias could be suppressed more than that when using an ultrasonic power amplifier (90.7 ± 1.2%, 75.8 ± 3.5%, and 68.1 ± 1.1%, respectively). Additionally, the proliferation suppressing ratios of each experimental group confirmed that the cell density decrements of the experimental groups exhibited statistical significance compared to the control group (ultrasonic power amplifier = 8.87%, ultrasonic power amplifier with 1 V biased linearizer = 23.87%, and ultrasonic power amplifier with 5 V biased linearizer = 31.56%).