Numerical study on magnetic effect on drug delivery vehicle motion in tumor-defective blood vessels using arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Algorithm

This study presented numerical study on the motion of drug delivery vehicle (DDV) in blood vessel based the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect due to the tumor-defective blood vessel. Instead of traditional particle tracing, the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Algorithm (ALE) was employed in this study to account for the force coupling between the moving DDV, blood flow, and magnetic field. The ALE, Navier-Stokes and Magnetic static modules facilitated by COMSOL software were employed to carry out the numerical simulations. The computational domain was treated as two-dimensional containing three defective opening gaps caused by the tumor tissue growth. The DDV in this paper was made of maghemite (Fe₂O₃). DDV was considered as entering the tumor tissues when it traveled through the defective opening gaps. The simulated results indicated that the density of DDV played importation roles on governing the DDV motion. When there is no magnetic field, the DDV with low density had greater chance to travel through the opening gaps compare with the maghemite DDV. The numerical simulations also demonstrated that the effect of magnetic field was significant. With the aid of externally applied magnetic field, it is possible that ferric oxide DDVs have greater chance to enter tumor comparing with the ones with same size but lower in density and without magnetic effect.