Patent ID: 9694193
Date: 2017-07-04
CPC Classifications: A61N,C12M,C12N

Claim:
1. A device for influencing the growth rate or metabolic activity of biological cells in an object, the device comprising: a single winding coil element being horseshoe-shaped; an electrical generator connected to the single winding coil element, the single winding being configured to be positioned essentially around the object, the object being inanimate; wherein the winding of the single winding coil element comprising two terminals defining a gap in between; and wherein the electrical generator being configured to discharge into the single winding coil element; the electrical generator comprising a power supply, a capacitor and a switching element, the switching element being configured for charging the capacitor in a first stage and discharging the capacitor in a second stage so as to provide a short duration high current into the single winding coil element, the short duration high current having a length of several hundreds of nanoseconds, the electrical generator being at least partly arranged in an enclosure and is pressurized to a predetermined high pressure value and the electrical generator being pressurized to a pressure of at least about 8 bar; the switching element being a serial two-gap spark gap switch configured to break down at a predefined discharge voltage; and an electric field having a field strength of between about 5-15 kV/cm generated by the single winding coil element comprising a superposition of rotational field and a conservative field so that the single winding coil element generates a short duration pulsed electromagnetic field by magnetic induction in the single winding coil element, the electromagnetic field having a field strength that is sufficiently high close to the gap in the single winding coil element to affect, preferably increase the permeability of, cell membranes and/or intracellular membranes of the biological cells contained in the object when in operation the object is placed inside the single winding coil element; the time duration of applying the pulsed field to the cells, the field strength and pulse frequency is selected to influence the growth rate or metabolic activity of the biological cells.