癌和正常细胞熵产生的差异性及其治疗意义

通过热力学计算证明通常条件下癌细胞的熵产生率高于正常细胞,熵流方向为从癌到正常组织.但在适当外场作用下,正常细胞的熵产生率可提高更多,因而可以改变熵流方向,从而抑止癌的毒性信息流的扩散.设计了可试用于癌症治疗的方脉冲电场.

Attempts to Introduce Thermodynamics in Anticancer Therapy Using Entropy Production Difference between Cancer and Normal Cells

During the tumor growth there are many differences between the healthy tissue and growing tumor,including metabolic,structural and thermodynamic differences,etc.Both structural and thermodynamic differences can be used to follow the entropy differences in cancer and normal tissue.Entropy productions due to various dissipation mechanisms based on temperature-differences,chemical potential gradient,chemical affinity,viscous stress and exerted field as driving forces are promising tools to be calculated as a potential targets for tumor isolation and demarcation.The relative importance of five terms of entropy production was compared by numerical estimation.It was demonstrated by quantitative calculation that the entropy production rate of cancerous cell is always higher than healthy cell apart from the case of external field applied.Different entropy production rates between two kinds of cells determine the direction of entropy flow among cells.The entropy flow from cancers to healthy cells would take along the harmful information of cancerous cell,propagating its toxic action to healthy tissues.To change the direction of entropy flow two ways are proposed.One is to reduce entropy production rate of cancerous cells through designing certain biochemical pathways,for example,producing pH gradient between cancer and normal.Another is to apply an external field(including electric field and ultrasound) to cells and enhance the entropy production rate of normal cells.We prove that an applied electric field with enough intensity and frequency or a low frequency and low intensity ultrasound irradiation may induce increasing entropy production rate in normal tissue around the tumor,consequently reverse the direction of entropy current.