In Vitro Study Of Irreversible Electroporation Enhanced By Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate In Liver Cancer Cells

Irreversible electroporation(IRE)is one of the energy-based tumor ablation modalities.It uses high amplitude electric pulses to increase the permeability of the cell membrane.When cells are exposed to electric pulses,damages to the nano-level metastable structure and pores will form,leading to cell apoptosis and tumor ablation.As a nonthermal therapy,IRE has plenty of potential advantages over other thermal therapies,such as(1)reduced treatment time,(2)reduced complications associated with thermal therapy,and(3)reduced damage to blood vessels or bile ducts adjacent to the tumor.Though these advantages,it still has some limitations needed to be addressed well,such as its failure in the treatment of large tumors(diameter>3 cm)without the use of repeated electrical impulses or the addition of needle electrodes.In order to address this issue,this study proposes a chemical enhancement method of IRE using a new kind of surfactant,sodium dodecyl sulfate(SDS).The IRE is combined with the modification of membrane properties.SDS was used to increase the permeability and conductivity of cell membrane and further expand the area of tumor ablation.The work of this paper mainly includes:(1)the toxicity test of SDS on human liver cancer cells(HepG2)to determine relatively safe and appropriate SDS concentrations,(2)the enhancement effect of SDS on IRE using HepG2 cell solution in vitro,(3)the enhancement effect of dimethyl sulfoxide(DMSO)on IRE using HepG2 cell solution in vitro and the comparison study between SDS and DMSO,(4)the enhancements of SDS and DMSO on high-frequency irreversible electroporation(H-FIRE)using HepG2 cell solution in vitro,and(5)the comparative study of enhancement effects of surfactant(SDS and DMSO)between IRE and H-FIRE.The results achieved in this work conclude that:(1)the higher the SDS concentration,the lower viability of HepG2.Therefore,SDS with a low concentration range(0.0001%w/v-0.001%w/v)was selected to meet the research objective(independent of the toxic effect of drugs),(2)SDS can significantly enhance the ablation effect of IRE,by decreasing the viability of liver cancer cells in vitro or reducing the electrical dose of IRE,(3)at lower electric field strengths(e.g.,500 V/cm),the ablation enhancement effect of SDS to IRE was significantly greater than that of DMSO,(4)both SDS and DMSO can enhance the ablation effect of H-FIRE,but the enhancement is significant for SDS when a higher electric field strength(e.g.,1000 V/cm)was while a lower electric field strength(500 V/cm)for DMSO,and(5)the enhancement effect of SDS on IRE is much greater than that of H-FIRE,while this conclusion was true for DMSO only when a higher electric field strength was used(e.g.,1000 V/cm-1500 V/cm).