艾哈迈德·哈桑博士.D., has long been fascinated by electromagnetics and how electrical impulses can affect the smallest of particles, 尤其是那些形状复杂的. 在高级电力，电子和电磁学实验室在罗伯特W. 无石膏企业和研究中心, the associate professor is focused on how to use high-powered electrical pulses to treat cancer cells.

Scientists have for some time explored the use of electrical pulses to deliver drugs and gene therapies into biological cells. 但大多数研究都是在二维领域观察细胞, 哈桑把事情推进了一步.

“在世界杯赌场盘口, we are one of the first groups to study how the three-dimensional shape of actual cells, 在现实的3D环境中成长, 影响他们的电反应,哈桑说。. “It’s only by looking at the full 3D structure that you can predict how the cell will behave when it’s excited by an electrical stimulus.”

通过他们的研究, Hassan and his graduate research assistant Somen Baidya have shown that the outer shape of a cell plays a significant role in how it will react to an electrical stimulus. 在美国国家标准与技术研究院(NIST)的帮助下, where their scientists have been able to determine and reconstruct the exact 3D shape of cells, 哈桑和拜迪亚现在有数千种细胞形状可供研究, 包括癌细胞.

精确到万亿分之一度

配备了一组计算机来创建计算模型和模拟, Hassan is working with multiple computational techniques that can be used to calculate the response of those complex, 三维癌细胞的电脉冲.

Electroporation is a technique in which an electrical field is applied to a cell in order to increase the permeability of the cell membrane. This allows chemicals such as therapeutic drugs or even DNA to easily be inserted into the cell. The technique offers potential advantages over other therapeutic methods of cancer treatments because of its noninvasiveness and lack of toxicity for noncancerous cells, 以及与其他疗法联合使用的可能性. The selectivity of the electroporation technique also makes it safer than other techniques that cannot differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells.

如果你想杀死癌细胞, then you apply a strong enough electrical stimulus to break down the cell membrane completely. We’re trying to figure out the optimum pulse that will give us the correct response." — 艾哈迈德·哈桑博士.D.

Variations in the rate of supraelectroporation used to pierce the cell membrane and penetrate the cell’s internal organelles can guide the selective targeting of desired cells with specific shapes. 当前目标, 哈桑说, is to determine how to calculate — with a high degree of accuracy and efficiency — the necessary voltage and precise location of these electrical pulses on the cell’s membrane to achieve the desired effect.

Electrical pulses are delivered at very high amplitudes for extremely short durations of time — from nanoseconds, 哪一个是十亿分之一秒, 对皮秒, 哪一个是万亿分之一秒. 在某些情况下, 目标是在细胞膜上制造一个小洞, 刚好大到能将物质输送到细胞内而不伤害细胞.

“如果孔变得太大，细胞可能会死亡，”哈桑说. “在某些情况下，这是需要的. 如果你想杀死癌细胞, then you apply a strong enough electrical stimulus to break down the cell membrane completely. We’re trying to figure out the optimum pulse that will give us the correct response.”

一旦计算技术发展起来, the next step will be to develop a machine learning (ML) platform that uses cell information to predict the precise excitation characteristics necessary to achieve the correct effect on the cell.

最终, 哈桑说, the new Plaster Center Power Lab will give him the capability to develop a novel, 可调, high-voltage pulser that can generate the desired electric surge needed as predicted by the ML platform. It will be designed to generate necessary short-time pulses of nanosecond or picosecond duration with high peak amplitude optimized for each cell shape.

从医学到月球

一旦发达, 这种ML技术可以用于治疗其他类型的细胞, 例如, 免疫细胞的分离、治疗或修饰免疫细胞的. 此外, different electrical signals can be used to selectively move and isolate specific cells from a collection of cells.

“这就像在细胞上磁铁一样. 这将开始吸引不同形状的细胞，”他说.

Hassan is currently working on the first two aspects of the project to get preliminary data, 然后筹集资金，开始建造硬件.

他说:“我们已经为此研究了三年。. “An optimistic timeframe is that we’re halfway there to finishing the engineering aspects before we can take it to the medical researchers and ask them to help us with the actual biological tests.”

自2015年起担任UMKC教员, Hassan serves as director of the Multidisciplinary Multiscale Electromagnetics Lab. 在来UMKC之前, he began studying nanostructures with extremely complex shapes as a postdoctoral researcher at NIST. There he developed a large library of computational codes to study their response to electromagnetic stimulus.

“当我来到UMKC, I was using this library of computer codes that I had developed as an electrical engineer to study complex shapes with a wide range of applications,哈桑说。. “其中一个应用是研究具有复杂形状的生物细胞.”

Another is looking at the electrical properties of sand and rock particles from the moon. 和他在NIST的合作者一起工作, Hassan was able to obtain the three-dimensional shapes of sand particles obtained during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

“We’re trying to calculate the electrical response of those sand particles as another exciting application of using electromagnetic radiation to understand the physics of complex shaped particles,他说.