Cell membrane electroporation modeling: A multiphysics approach

GOLDBERG EZEQUIEL; SUÁREZ CECILIA; ALFONSO MAURICIO; MARCHESE JUAN; MARSHALL GUILLERMO; SOBA ALEJANDRO

Norfolk

Congreso; 2nd. World Congress on Electroporation; 2017

International Society for Electroporation-Based Technologies and Treatments

Electroporation-basedtechniques are widely used at present in health, environmental andfood-related areas. Nonetheless, their microscopic biophysical basisare not yet completely understood neither explicitly formalized forpredicting electric pulse - cell membrane interaction. Here wepresent a new multiphysics model that describes the electrochemical,mechanical and poration membrane responses of an spherical cellsubjected to a train of electric pulses. The model consists on thePoisson equation for the electric field, the Nernst-Planck equationfor ion transport (protons, hydroxides, sodium and chloride), theMaxwell tensor and mechanical equilibrium equation for mechanicalmembrane deformations and the Smoluchowski equation for membranepermeabilization. The resulting system of highly nonlinear partialdifferential equations was solved in two spatial dimensions and timewith cylindrical coordinates using a mixed finite elements-finitedifferences method, with an explicit discretization of the cellmembrane. Distributed programming based on OpenMP was used formaximizing current multithreading processors usage. The newtheoretical model is able to predict for the first time thespace-time evolution of the electric field distribution, the inducedtransmembrane potential, the quantity and size of membrane pores, thespatial distribution of ionic species concentration as well as theplasma membrane mechanical deformation in response to the electrictreatment. Model predictions correlate well with experimental andanalytical results available in literature.