Effects of electrical field on immunological properties of parathyroid cells

Electric field is known to be an outside factor that can affect cellular gene expression, morphology, differentiation potency and proliferation. There are various research groups focusing on the effect of electric field on the cancer cells or polar cells like nerve cells and muscle cells. However, there are no satisfying demonstrations of electric field effect on cellular properties such as immune properties. Also, according to literature, the electric field effect on the cell types except those mentioned above is insufficiently operated, especially endocrine cells such as parathyroid, thymus and thyroid. In this study, effect of electric field on any possible alteration of parathyroid cells and their immune properties have been investigated. Parathyroid allotransplantation is a certain solution for the treatment of hypoparathyroidism. This allotransplantation procedure is not followed with immunosuppressant usage later thus, it is excessively important for transplanted parathyroid cells not to contain any immune markers that can activate immune response from the recipient. On the other hand, HLA surface protein is known to be the main molecular structure which is responsible for the immune system cells to recognize any non-self-cells. In this study the main objective is to aim more successful allotransplantation with the parathyroid cells by decreasing and/or stopping HLA expression or inducing non-functional HLA expression by the controlled electric field treatment without any effect on the viability or functions of the parathyroid cells.