Numerical investigation of proximity effects on field gradients in biological cells

Although the beneficial and detrimental effects of human cells electic field (EF) exposure are well investigated, the interactions mechanisms between the cell and the EF are still a matter of research. In this work we present a numerical approach to investigate the induced cell-cell EF gradients at different regions of multi-layered spherical cells. Based on a symbolic scattering-matrix approach, the induced EF in a single cell is obtained using the equivalent electrical network for the multilayered sphere. Cell-cell EF interactions are obtained for a group of 60 randomly positioned cells exposed to an EF of 100 V/m. Two cases were analyzed by setting the EF frequency to 50 Hz and 2.45 GHz. Numerical results show cellular electrical responses that are in agreement with experimental observations. Quantitative results show that cell-cell EF interactions might be enough to trigger electrically mediated biological responses in the cells. Therefore, the model can be used to investigate possible interactions mechanism between cells and EFs.