Frying cancer cells

Biomedical engineers at Virginia Tech and the University of California at Berkeley have developed a method of destroying cancer cells using electric pulses.

The process, called irreversible electroporation (IRE), allows tumour cells to be removed without the side-effects of current treatments, such as damaging healthy tissue or leaving malignant cells.

Electroporation is a process that can increase the level of permeability of a cell. It can create either a reversible opening in a cell or an irreversible opening, and it is at the irreversible stage that the cell dies. This is the concept that the engineers used to target cancer cells.

IRE was developed by bioengineering professor Boris Rubinsky at Berkeley and engineer Rafael V Davalos at Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Science (SBES).

‘IRE removes tumours by irreversibly opening tumour cells through a series of short, intense electric pulses from small electrodes placed in or around the body,’ said Davalos.