The Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP) is one of the world's pioneers in plasma medicine. Over the past few months, a team of scientists there has been investigating the additional effects of using pulsed electric fields in combination with cold plasma.
Physicists, biochemists, biologists, physicians and pharmacists at the INP are investigating the interactions between physical plasmas and cells under one roof. The kINPen plasma jet developed at the INP is now part of the instrumentarium of many clinics and is being used successfully in the treatment of chronically infected wounds and skin diseases. INP scientists are currently investigating the effect of plasma on cancer cells. With the study "Cell stimulation versus cell death induced by sequential treatments with pulsed electric fields and cold atmospheric pressure plasma," a team of researchers at the institute has now gained important new insights in this area and published them in the current issue of PloS one.
The study combined two technologies for medical application: pulsed electric fields (PEF) and cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP). While PEFs can induce pore formation in cell membranes, thereby facilitating the uptake of molecules, CAP mainly acts through the formation of reactive species generated in a liquid environment. The INP research team has now investigated whether the combination of PEFs with plasma-treated cell cultures increases the viability of mammalian cells. Experiments were conducted with rat liver epithelial WBF344 cells and tumourigenic WB-ras cells to directly compare non-tumourigenic and tumourigenic cells of the same origin. A first finding was that WB-ras cells were more sensitive to the treatments than non-tumour-forming WBF344 cells, with viability strongly dependent on cell type and the applied field strength. In addition, the order of treatment plays an important role: more cells were killed when plasma was applied first, followed by a PEF with 100 μs. The results suggest that not only pore formation but also other mechanisms contributed to the mutually reinforcing effect of the two methods. This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). (Funding code 13N13960)
scientific contact person:
Dr. Anna Steuer
Abteilung Plasmalifescience
Tel.: +49 3834 554 3972
E-Mail:
anna.steuer@inp-greifswald.de
original publication:
A. Steuer, C.-M. Wolff, T. von Woedtke, K.-D. Weltmann, J.-F. Kolb (2018). Cell stimulation versus cell death induced by sequential treatments with pulsed electric fields and cold atmospheric pressure plasma. PloS one 13.10 (2018): e0204916.
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204916
