Abstract :
This is the seventh Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science on the biomedical applications of ionized gases and electromagnetic fields. A total of seven excellent and exciting papers covers the intersection between biomedicine and plasmas/electromagnetic fields. The special issue papers encompass a wide range of research that include work on the decontamination of human extremities, inactivation of different microbial organisms, and the interaction of cells to plasma-modified surfaces. Furthermore, the manuscripts include work on the plasma-generated active chemical species and their effects on mammalian cells, and a study on the effect of atmospheric-pressure plasma on the structure and the function of a digestive enzyme, i.e., pepsin. It is hoped that the state-of-the-art studies in this Special Issue further advance the technology and attract more and more researchers outside our traditional plasma science community. The first Special Issue on "Nonthermal Medical/Biological Applications Using Ionized Gases and Electromagnetic Fields" was published 12 years ago, following ElectroMed99, one of the first international symposiums on the research field. Since then, the special issues have attracted an enormous number of readers in a variety of fields every two years. In the early 2000s, most of the papers published in the special issues had been written primarily by plasma scientists. Over the past decade, we have observed a dramatic increase in the number of collaborative papers written in conjunction with biologists, biochemists, and medical/dental doctors. The multidisciplinary teams are particularly important and essential to understanding of the fundamental mechanisms and realizing the practical applications of low-temperature atmospheric-pressure plasmas and high-power ultrashort electrical pulses in biology and medicine.
