(250p) Chemo-Electro-Thermotherapy in Capillary Systems: Simplify Model and Simulation

The use of electrical fields in medicine include a long range of practical applications for diagnosis and treatment of recurrent contemporary illnesses. A few examples of these applications are biological imaging, neurology, iontophoresis, drug delivery, and the most recently Chemo-Electro-Thermotherapy for cancer therapy. In a previous contribution, these authors identified a framework for undergraduate research on the subject¹. This exploratory research included multiple categories: Cancer and the major effects of Angiogenesis, Tumor Growth and Electrical Fields. From a mathematical modeling approach, it was concluded that further effort was needed in five distinctive areas to conduct effective product design and development within the field. In this current work, at least two areas of efforts are reported and further developed to analyze the role of electrical fields, Joule heating, interstitial pressure and systemic or intramural drug injection. The main contribution of this research is demonstrating the effects of the order magnitude of the applied electrical field and drug concentration gradient across a capillary bed on malignant growths. The results will show temperature gradients in the arterial and tissue domains as a consequence of the applied number of voltages. Preliminary report on the cell count as well as drug uptake will be also shown.

1. A Framework for Undergraduate Research on Chemo-Electro-Thermotherapy, AIChE Annual Meeting: American Electrophoresis Society, San Francisco, CA, Nov. 14, 2016. F. Smallwood, Chirstopher Fernandes, S. Oyanader, M. Oyanader.