The Pennes bioheat transfer equation is the most used model to calculate the temperature induced in a tumor when physical therapies like electrochemical treatment, electrochemotherapy and/or radiofrequency are applied. In this work, a modification of the Pennes bioheat equation to study the temperature distribution induced by any electrode array in an anisotropic tissue containing several nodules (primary or metastatic) with arbitrary shape is proposed. For this, the Green functions approach is generalized to include boundaries among two or more media. The analytical solution we obtain in a very compact way, under quite general suppositions, allows calculating the temperature distributions in the tumor volumes and their surfaces, in terms of heat sources, initial temperature and calorific sources at the boundary of tumors.
Understanding untreated tumour growth kinetics and its intrinsic behaviour is interesting and intriguing. The aim of this study is to propose an approximate analytical expression that allows us to simulate changes in surface charge density at the cancer-surrounding healthy tissue interface during the untreated solid tumour growth. For this, the Gompertz and Poisson equations are used. Simulations reveal that the unperturbed solid tumour growth is closely related to changes in the surface charge density over time between the tumour and the surrounding healthy tissue. Furthermore, the unperturbed solid tumour growth is governed by temporal changes in this surface charge density. It is concluded that results corroborate the correspondence between the electrical and physiological parameters in the untreated cancer, which may have an essential role in its growth, progression, metastasis and protection against immune system attack and anti-cancer therapies. In addition, the knowledge of surface charge density changes at the cancer-surrounding healthy tissue interface may be relevant when redesigning the molecules in chemotherapy and immunotherapy taking into account their polarities. This can also be true in the design of completely novel therapies.
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