A FEM Study of Molecular Transport Through a Single Nanopore in a Spherical Cell

Abstract

Electroporation has a specific application in the delivery of drugs into the cells. In addition, the challenge is to be able to deliver the drugs effectively. The key to the electroporation-based delivery method is regulated induced transmembrane voltage (ITMV). Recently, with the advent of COVID-19, there has been an increase in clinical trials on the delivery of DNA plasmids by electroporation. As a result, the substantial number of laboratory experiments are not feasible, thereby increasing the dependency on simulation-based research. Simulations of delivery of extracellular material into the cell depend upon molecular transport modeling in an electroporated cell. In this paper, molecular transport through a single nanopore is being studied theoretically. The closed-form expression of molecular transport is used in COMSOL Multiphysics simulation to obtain extracellular concentration variation as a function of time. Sinusoidal pulses with the varying magnitude of electric field (8kV/cm and 10 kV/cm) and time duration were used to understand pulse parameters' effect on molecular transport. The simulation results match the empirical result from the literature hence validate the simulation study.