An in Silico Study on Nanocomposite Magnetic Implants for Microwave Cancer Theranostics

Microwave (MW) hyperthermia (HT) is a novel cancer therapy to treat deep-seated tumors, such as bone cancers. The heat administration can be troublesome if external antennas are used. So, magnetic nanocomposite biomaterials, termed magnetic scaffolds, have been proposed as local thermo-seeds for controlling local recurrence rate of bone tumors. However, the possibility of using magneto-dielectric biocompatible implant as MW-responsive theranostic agents has poorly been assessed. In this work, an in silico study based on a 1D MW propagation model in a multilayer structure has been proposed to study if magnetic scaffolds can be used to perform and, contemporary, monitor the HT. The numerical study identified that a matching medium of relative dielectric permittivity of 40 would enables sufficient signal transmission at the frequencies of 0.434, 1.25, 2.45 and 5.8 GHz, thus enabling the HT and the MW monitoring. Indeed, by performing a differential analysis of the variation of the transmission coefficient during the HT, it has been assessed the possibility of using magnetic scaffolds as MW theranostic agents.