Modeling biopotential signals and current densities of multiple breast cancerous cells.

Abstract

This study presents a model to simulate the electrophysiological activities of multiple Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 (MCF-7) cells, the most studied breast cancer cell line. The intercellular spacing of MCF-7 cells is estimated using the effective diffusion coefficient. Nonuniform finite-difference discretization is implemented to accommodate for the contrast in size between the intercellular spacing and the cell dimension. The model computes the amplitude and the spatiotemporal patterns of biopotentials and electric current densities at different cell division stages. The results show that the biopotentials increase proportionally to the number of cells, especially when all cells are in the hyperpolarization stage. Also, the results show significant electric current density in the intercellular gap between the cells.