Capacitive coupling increases the accuracy of cell-specific tumour disruption by electric fields

Abstract Irreversible electroporation holds great potential for cell-specific lysis due to the size-dependent susceptibility of cells to externally imposed electric fields. Previous attempts at selective cell lysis lead to significant overlap between affected populations and struggle with inconsistent biological outcome. We propose that charge transfer at the electrode-liquid interface is responsible by inducing multifactorial effects originating from both the electric field and electrochemical reactions. A promising remedy is the coating of electrodes with a high-k dielectric layer. The resulting capacitive coupling restores the selective potential of electric field mediated lysis in a microfluidic setup. Initial experiments show the consistent depletion of erythrocytes from whole blood while leaving leukocytes intact. The same is true for the reproducible and selective depletion of Jurkat and MCF-7 cells in a mixture with leukocytes. Unexpectedly, the observed order of lysis cannot be correlated with cell size. This implies that the cellular response to capacitive coupling features a selective characteristic that is different from conventional lysis configurations.