(244g) Modeling and Validation of the Effect of Electric Field on Drug Delivery into the Tumor Cell

A tumor microenvironment has complex multiphysics and multiscale characteristics. To deal with this we propose the use of agent-based modeling (ABM). Specifically, ABM is employed to predict the tumor cell behavior in contact with a chemical perturbagen or drug of interest; this is essential for personalizing cancer treatment. There is the fact that the tumor microenvironment is very heterogeneous due to angiogenesis, creating significant barriers for effective drug delivery. Application of an electric field has the potential to overcome some of these barriers. Equation-based computational models have been developed to study electrokinetics phenomena. However, to our knowledge, in the open literature, an ABM has not been used to study the effect of applied electric field on a complex chemotherapeutic delivery system. In this paper we discuss the development of an ABM model that would lead to a significantly more realistic prediction of the optimum electric field and chemotherapeutics that would result in the maximum fraction of cell killed. We also used COMSOL Multiphysics simulation to solve equation-based computational model that simultaneously considers all three electrokinetics phenomena (electrophoresis, electroporation, and electroosmosis). The simulation is based on the coupling of Smoluchowski, Nernst-Planck for three specific species, and Navier-stokes equations. Finally, we have simulated the microfluidic device for validating the deterministic model.