Research PaperUltrasound assisted electrochemical distinction of normal and cancerous cells

- An electrochemical sensor was applied to investigate response of breast normal and cancerous cells to ultrasonic stimulation.
- Microbubbles were generated by electrolytic current to enhance sonoporation efficiency.
- Patch-clamp method reveals higher membrane potential in normal cells.
- Ultrasonic stimulation of normal cells show more changes than cancerous cells in their CV patterns.

Cyclic voltammetry (CV) is applied to monitor the sonoporative behavior of normal and cancer breast cells. Novel electrochemically produced microbubbles in the solution induce acoustic cavitation in the cells by ultrasonic stimulation (US). This makes sonoporation in the cells which exchanges ionic species between inner and outer parts of the membrane. Such ionic variations in culture media are detected by CV measurements. The differences in the CV patterns of the normal (MCF-10A) and cancerous (MCF-7) cells before and after US is related to the changed ion gradient between inner and outer parts of the cells. As a supporting result, cell membrane voltage in control cells, as an indicative of the membrane ion gradient, was measured by patch-clamp method which reveals the detected changes in CV diagrams. This phenomena would assist to achieve a new electrochemical method for cancer detection.

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