Electroporation ability of helium atmospheric pressure plasma jet for normal and cancerous cells

In the last two decades, atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) has gained a lot of attention, due to its low production cost and the wide range of applications that it can be used for such as, plasma medicine, local surface modification, local sterilization etc. In particular, helium APPJ shows very promising results in selectively treating cancerous tissue while leaving the healthy tissue intact. However, the mechanism behind this is not very clear yet and is mainly attributed to the production of radicals which collide with the living tissue and the high electric field generated in the intracellular region. In this study, the transmembrane voltage (TMV) and therefore the ability for electroporation of healthy and diseased cells in the presence of the electric field induced by a helium APPJ is investigated via numerical simulations. Differences in the TMV could explain the ability of APPJ to selectively treat cancerous tissue.