Irreversible electroporation (IRE) has emerged as an appealing non-ionizing, non-thermal ablation therapy, independent of antineoplastic drugs. Limited but successful outcomes in IRE conducted in vivo, in small focal hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC), have been reported. Nonetheless, the electric parameters of IRE are usually delivered in an unplanned manner. This work investigates the integration of computational modeling to hydrogels mimicking the HCC microenvironment, as a powerful framework to: circumvent ethical concerns of in vivo experimentation; safely tune the electric parameters reaching the IRE electric field threshold; and propel the translation of IRE as a routine clinical alternative to the treatment of HCC. Therefore, a parametric study served to evaluate the effects of the pulse amplitude, the number of pulses and electrodes, the treatment time, the hydrogel–tumor size, and the cell type. The ablation extent was surveyed by confocal microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in cylindrical and realistic tumor-shaped hydrogels, respectively. A large ablation (70%–100%) was verified in all constructs.

中文翻译：

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肝脏肿瘤模拟作为潜在的翻译框架，用于规划和测试多电极不可逆电穿孔

不可逆电穿孔（IRE）已成为一种颇具吸引力的非电离、非热消融疗法，且独立于抗肿瘤药物。据报道，在小局灶性肝细胞癌 (HCC) 体内进行的 IRE 取得了有限但成功的结果。尽管如此，IRE 的电气参数通常以无计划的方式提供。这项工作研究了计算模型与模拟 HCC 微环境的水凝胶的整合，作为一个强大的框架：规避体内实验的伦理问题；安全地调整电参数达到IRE电场阈值；并推动 IRE 转化为 HCC 治疗的常规临床替代方案。因此，参数研究旨在评估脉冲幅度、脉冲和电极数量、治疗时间、水凝胶肿瘤大小和细胞类型的影响。分别通过共聚焦显微镜和磁共振成像（MRI）在圆柱形和真实肿瘤形水凝胶中调查消融程度。在所有构造中都验证了大的消融（70%–100%）。