New Microfluidic Device Offers Means for Studying Electric Field Cancer Therapy

Researchers at MIT’s research center in Singapore have developed a new microfluidic device that tests the effects of electric fields on cancer cells. They observed that a range of low-intensity, middle-frequency electric fields effectively stopped breast and lung cancer cells from growing and spreading, while having no adverse effect on neighboring healthy cells.

The device, about the size of a U.S. dollar coin, is designed to help scientists narrow in on safe ranges of electric fields to noninvasively treat breast, lung, and other forms of cancer. The results are published online in Scientific Reports.

The paper’s co-authors include Roger Kamm, the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering at MIT, as well as research scientists Andrea Pavesi and Giulia Adriani, postdoc Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani, and student Andy Tay of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). Senior research officer Wei Hseun Yeap and associate professor Siew Cheng Wong of the Singapore Immunology Network also contributed to the report.

“We hope this device will increase interest by researchers who are exploring the effect of electric fields on different types of cancer,” Adriani says. “In our study, we noticed the effect was limited to the cancer cell at the tested frequencies and intensities, but we really need to explore other cells and parameters.”

An electric recipe

For the past decade, scientists have been experimenting with the use of electric fields to treat malignant cells, in an alternative cancer treatment called tumor treating field, or TTF. The therapy stems from the interaction between key cellular structures in tumors, and an external electric field.

In general, an electric field is a field of forces that act on objects that have an electric charge. An electric field can also influence the alignment of polar molecules in tumor cells, such as microtubules. Normally, these molecules are crucial for cell division, which, when it goes into overdrive, leads to tumor growth. When microtubules line up end to end to form a mitotic spindle, the cell’s genetic material attaches to the spindle fibers, pulling and splitting the cell into two cells.

In the past, scientists have observed that these charged molecules respond to a low-frequency electric field, between 100 and 300 kilohertz and with an intensity as strong as the field strength of a mixer or toaster. Instead of forming mitotic spindles, the microtubule alignment is disrupted in such a way that it prevents cell division and tumor growth.

“Scientists have been trying to figure out a lot of different recipes to try to stimulate the cell with an electric field,” Pavesi says. “By tweaking the intensity and frequency, you can have an effect only on the cancer cells, leaving the other type of cells unaltered, without destroying them. That’s the key concept.”

A company, Novocure, has since been founded to develop TTF therapies for people with brain and lung cancer. Pavesi, who has been helping to design microfluidic devices with Kamm, came up with the idea for a device to test TTF after watching a TED talk by Novocure’s founder.

“Immediately, I was thinking to myself, ‘This is an easy thing I can replicate in one of my devices,’” Pavesi recalls.

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