# Exploring Tumor Cell–Platelet Biochemical Interactions by Dielectric Measurements of Blood: A Potential Target for Tumor Detection and Staging

## TL;DR

This paper explores using dielectric measurements of blood to detect and stage tumors by analyzing changes in blood properties caused by cancer cells and platelets.

## Contribution

The study introduces dielectric relaxation and displacement currents as a novel approach to analyze tumor progression in blood.

## Key findings

- Dielectric properties of blood change with tumor progression and platelet activation.
- Displacement currents can explain decreases in cancer cells in the bloodstream over time.
- Dielectric analysis could lead to a non-invasive, low-cost method for cancer staging.

## Abstract

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, so it is imperative to understand the signaling pathways that drive tumor progression and translate knowledge into better treatment strategies. The study of neoplastic processes through thermodynamic procedures, using sophisticated mathematical models, opens new avenues, highlighting evolutionary and characterizing details otherwise impossible to evaluate. Research characterizing the dielectric properties of cancer tissues is still limited, but it is already known that changes within and around cancer cells in the bloodstream strongly influence these properties. Thus, the present theoretical investigation focuses on the difference in blood dielectric properties between healthy rat models and those with lung cancer, monitoring tumor development at different time points. The effects of neoplastic phenomena were calculated with the dielectric relaxation technique developed with the non-equilibrium thermodynamic approach with internal variables. This study analyzed for the first time the role of displacement currents to explain otherwise unexplainable phenomena, i.e., the decrease over time of cancer cells in the blood. Furthermore, dielectric analysis allowed us to determine the peculiar characteristics of the intravasation phenomenon that evolves in the blood during cancer pathology, and it could lay the groundwork for a new diagnostic approach.

This paper aims to investigate the dielectric properties of blood for tumor detection and staging. The application of complex thermodynamic models and the study of the trend over time of some thermodynamic functions have allowed us to highlight the generation of displacement currents caused by changes in charge, i.e., by the activation and consequent accumulation of platelets on migrating tumor cells. Although few studies exist to date in this regard, the technique used has provided promising results, especially in terms of building a database. In this context, the evaluation of the dielectric parameters of healthy and cancerous blood can be exploited for the staging of cancer. The main advantages of this method include easy application, non-invasiveness, low cost, and online monitoring.