Phillips Mary, Rubinsky Liel, Meir Arie, Raju Narayan, Rubinsky Boris
Department of Engineering, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2015 Aug;14(4):395-410. doi: 10.1177/1533034614560102. Epub 2014 Nov 21.
Electrolytic ablation is a method that operates by delivering low magnitude direct current to the target region over long periods of time, generating electrolytic products that destroy cells. This study was designed to explore the hypothesis stating that electrolytic ablation can be made more effective when the electrolysis-producing electric charges are delivered using electric pulses with field strength typical in reversible electroporation protocols. (For brevity we will refer to tissue ablation protocols that combine electroporation and electrolysis as E(2).) The mechanistic explanation of this hypothesis is related to the idea that products of electrolysis generated by E(2) protocols can gain access to the interior of the cell through the electroporation permeabilized cell membrane and therefore cause more effective cell death than from the exterior of an intact cell. The goal of this study is to provide a first-order examination of this hypothesis by comparing the charge dosage required to cause a comparable level of damage to a rat liver, in vivo, when using either conventional electrolysis or E(2) approaches. Our results show that E(2) protocols produce tissue damage that is consistent with electrolytic ablation. Furthermore, E(2) protocols cause damage comparable to that produced by conventional electrolytic protocols while delivering orders of magnitude less charge to the target tissue over much shorter periods of time.
电解消融是一种通过长时间向目标区域输送低强度直流电来发挥作用的方法，会产生破坏细胞的电解产物。本研究旨在探讨一种假说，即当使用可逆电穿孔方案中典型场强的电脉冲来输送产生电解的电荷时，电解消融可以变得更有效。（为简洁起见，我们将结合电穿孔和电解的组织消融方案称为E(2)。）该假说的机理解释与这样一种观点有关，即E(2)方案产生的电解产物可以通过电穿孔使细胞膜通透性增加而进入细胞内部，因此比从完整细胞外部导致更有效的细胞死亡。本研究的目的是通过比较在体内对大鼠肝脏造成可比程度损伤时，使用传统电解方法或E(2)方法所需的电荷量，对这一假说进行初步检验。我们的结果表明，E(2)方案产生的组织损伤与电解消融一致。此外，E(2)方案造成的损伤与传统电解方案相当，同时在更短的时间内将比传统电解方案少几个数量级的电荷输送到目标组织。
