Experimental studies on effects of sub-lethal dose of pulsed electric field on Hela cells

In this paper, we studied the effects of sub-lethal dose of pulsed electric field on cervical cancer cells to achieve an efficient IRE by experiments on Hela cells. MTT and flow cytometry were used to detect the cell viability and cell circle. From the experiment results, it could be concluded that cell proliferation is inhibited by the sub-lethal dose field and there is a raise in proliferation inhibition ratio with the increase of the amplitude of electric pulses. It is also found that cells in the G2 phase increased obviously, which may accelerate cell division and thus increase the risk of cancer cell regeneration. All the experimental studies above indicate that it is crucial to determine pulse doses for IRE application to ensure that all the cancer cells of the target tissue are killed completely.