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23
Nanoelectroporation for
Nonthermal Ablation
Richard Nuccitelli
23.1 INTRODUCTION
In 2001, the world was rst introduced to a new kind of interaction between electric elds and
biological systems. That is when Schoenbach et al. (2001) rst described the effect of intense
pulsed electric elds in the nanosecond range (nsPEF) on cells and tissues. The two main dis-
tinguishing characteristics of these pulses is their large amplitude and their ability to penetrate
past the outer plasma membrane into the interior of the cells and organelles located between the
delivering electrodes. Before this, cells had never experienced intracellular electr