Investigation of the influence of viscoelasticity on oncotripsy

Abstract

Oncotripsy has recently been proposed as a means of selectively targeting cancer cells via resonant harmonic excitation (Heyden and Ortiz, 2016). The method makes use of aberrations in material properties of cancerous cells which allow to induce local resonance up to membrane lysis in cancerous cells while leaving healthy cells intact. Here, we explore the influence of viscoelasticity on the oncotripsy effect. Based on Rayleigh damping, we derive viscoelastic target frequencies and simulate the fully nonlinear transient response of healthy and cancerous cells at resonance. Results confirm the viability of oncotripsy with viscoelastic material behavior of cell constituents accounted for.