A fundamental theoretical study on the different effect of electroporation on tumor blood vessels and normal blood vessels

•The tumor blood vessel (BV) is abnormal on the structure, compared with normal BV.•The endothelial cells (ECs) determine the main function of BV.•The transmembrane voltage in vascular smooth muscle cells are higher than in ECs.•The ECs in the tumor BV sustain a stronger electroporation than in the normal BV.•The electric pulse may kill both tumor cells and tumor BV during the treatment. Electroporation achieved by the application of pulsed electric field is successfully used for clinical tumor ablation. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) and irreversible electroporation (IRE), which are two protocols based on electroporation, have been shown to ablate only tumor cells while preserving the function of normal blood vessels. However, the mechanism of this unique advantage is still not fully understood. This study first built a multilayer dielectric model of both normal and tumor blood vessels to study the electroporation effect. Since endothelial cells are the main component of normal and tumor blood vessels, this study mainly analyzed the electroporation effect on endothelial cells. The rich vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), could play a protective function, allowing endothelial cells to suffer less electroporation effect in normal blood vessels. Interestingly, the endothelial cells in tumor blood vessel sustained a stronger electroporation effect than those in normal blood vessels due to the lack of VSMCs. This study may provide a conceivable explanation for why the structure of endothelial cells in normal blood vessels is preserved during electroporation treatment. This study also demonstrates that ECT or IRE may also damage both tumor blood vessels and cells while preserving normal blood vessels, which benefits complete tumor ablation.