Nanotechnology and Cancer Bioelectricity: Bridging the Gap Between Biology and Translational Medicine

Abstract

Bioelectricity is the electrical activity that occurs within living cells and tissues. This activity is critical for regulating homeostatic cellular function and communication, and disruptions of the same can lead to a variety of conditions, including cancer. Cancer cells are known to exhibit abnormal electrical properties compared to their healthy counterparts, and this has driven researchers to investigate the potential of harnessing bioelectricity as a tool in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. In parallel, bioelectricity represents one of the means to gain fundamental insights on how electrical signals and charges play a role in cancer insurgence, growth, and progression. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature in this field, addressing the fundamentals of bioelectricity in single cancer cells, cancer cell cohorts, and cancerous tissues. The emerging role of bioelectricity in cancer proliferation and metastasis is introduced. Based on the acknowledgement that this biological information is still hard to access due to the existing gap between biological findings and translational medicine, the latest advancements in the field of nanotechnologies for cellular electrophysiology are examined, as well as the most recent developments in micro- and nano-devices for cancer diagnostics and therapy targeting bioelectricity.