Nonlinear Supra-Electroporation in Realistic Stem Cell Morphologies

Exposing cells to ultrashort electric field pulses can lead to the permeabilization of the membranes of the internal cell organelles, such as the nucleus, which is termed as supra-electroporation. In this paper, we study the supra-electroporation of stem cells with realistic morphologies under nanosecond electrical pulse stimulation. For such short pulses, the cell and the nucleus membranes exhibit non-linearity in their conductance. Therefore, we used a non-linear model for the cells' membranes, coupled with a quasi-static electromagnetic solver, and obtained the solution using a commercial Finite Element Method (FEM) solver. The results show that the outer shape of the cell has a strong effect on the magnitude and the spatiotemporal patterns of the electric field inside the cell, which affects the rate of the supra-electroporation of the nucleus. These variations in the rate of the supra-electroporation of the nucleus can guide the selective targeting of desired cells with specific shapes.