Stimulation of Hela cells by intense pulsed UV radiaion from Z-pinch discharge

In the recent decade, biological effects and application of pulsed power energy have attracted much attention and been widely investigated, especially pulsed electric fields and atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasma. In this paper, we describe the stimulation of HeLa cells through intense pulsed UV irradiation. Pulsed UV source is driven by a short pulse current (110ns) Z-pinch discharge, compared with the conventional CW UV source or pulse Xenon flash lamp. The measured spectral distribution is from the short vacuum UV to UVA. After the exposure, we examine the cell viability and proliferation by means of molecular biological assays and preliminarily study the effect of irradiation shot number and spectral region on the cell response. Results show that the cell deactivation effect increases as the irradiation dose increases. However, it is notable that cell activation effect was also obtained under the proper irradiation parameter. Cell division and proliferation could be promoted after exposure to moderate low dose irradiation. And irradiation in the shorter spectral region VUV-UVB mainly affects the cell response, especially on the activation effect. Activation effect induced by this pulsed UV irradiation is anticipated to be repeated in other cell lines, such as the epidermal cell and could be a useful tool to accelerate the cell growth and related medical treatment, such as wound healing.