title: A computational study of cancer hyperthermia based on vascular magnetic nanoconstructs.
abstract: The application of hyperthermia to cancer treatment is studied using a novel model arising from the fundamental principles of flow, mass and heat transport in biological tissues. The model is defined at the scale of the tumour microenvironment and an advanced computational scheme called theembedded multiscale methodis adopted to solve the governing equations. More precisely, this approach involves modelling capillaries as one-dimensional channels carrying flow, and special mathematical operators are used to model their interaction with the surrounding tissue. The proposed computational scheme is used to analyse hyperthermic treatment of cancer based on systemically injected vascular magnetic nanoconstructs carrying super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. An alternating magnetic field is used to excite the nanoconstructs and generate localized heat within the tissue. The proposed model is particularly adequate for this application, since it has a unique capability of incorporating microvasculature configurations based on physiological data combined with coupled capillary flow, interstitial filtration and heat transfer. A virtual tumour model is initialized and the spatio-temporal distribution of nanoconstructs in the vascular network is analysed. In particular, for a reference iron oxide concentration, temperature maps of several different hypothesized treatments are generated in the virtual tumour model. The observations of the current study might in future guide the design of more efficient treatments for cancer hyperthermia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering , The Pennsylvania State University, University Park , PA, USA.
authors.forename: Mahdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nabil
authors.affiliation: Modeling and Scientific Computing (MOX), Department of Mathematics , Politecnico di Milano , Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2470-0189
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zunino
keywords: cancer hyperthermia; embedded multiscale method; finite-element simulations; heat and mass transfer; nanotechnology