Experimental study on the killing effect of the irreversible electroporation in different frequencies

Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a novel therapy that employs short high intense electric field to destroy the cytoskeletal structure and ablate the tissue, especially the tumor tissue. Compared to traditional treatment, IRE is a nonthermal therapy, which is not limited by the thermal sink near the blood vessel. However, the experiment of animals and the clinical trials all reveal that there is muscle contraction during IRE. The way using high frequency pulses was proposed to reduce the muscle contraction, while the killing effect of the high frequency pulse is still a question to be solved. Therefore, in this study the influence of the different frequency on the killing effect are discussed. The human epidermic cells (Hacat) and the skin cancer cell (GLL19) are investigated in this study. The range of the burst frequency in this paper is 250kHz~2MHz, and the on time of each burst is 100us. There is one burst persecond, and the amplitude of the electric field is 1000V/cm. The outcome between the single pulse and the high frequency burst is similar. However, there are still some differences of the outcome among the different frequency. The 250kHz has the best killing effect while the 1MHz has the worst outcome. The mechanism of the high frequency IRE is different from the traditional parameters IRE, which need the further study.