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- 2019
Special Collection on Electroporation-Based Therapies: A Selection of Papers From the Second World Congress on ElectroporationAbstract: The use of pulsed electric fields (PEFs) is a rapidly growing field with applications in medicine, food, industry, and environment. This special collection focuses on medical applications specifically aimed at developing effective cancer therapies and understanding the underlying mechanisms of those approaches. Pulsed electric fields can be applied in a variety of ways and is typically characterized by the pulse width (nanosecond to millisecond) and the specific intended application (ablation, delivery, or diagnostic). A general term that is used is electroporation, which is a means to increase the permeability of cells via the use of PEF and has applications ranging from gene and drug delivery to ablation to bacterial inactivation to food processing. When a cell is exposed to a sufficiently intense electric field (for a sufficient duration), local defects in the cell membrane appear and become permeable to molecules that otherwise cannot pass through it. In reversible electroporation, the cell membrane is permeabilized to molecules otherwise deprived of transmembrane transport mechanisms. This is a transient phenomenon as after a short time the membrane reseals and reestablishes its homeostatic semipermeable properties, allowing ions and other small molecules to passively cross
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