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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Electrochemotherapy of Tumours
Published on: December 15, 2008
[The role of electroporation in increasing the effectiveness of anticancer drugs]
Jūrate Labanauskiene1, Janina Didziapetriene, Eduardas Aleknavicius
1Institute of Oncology, Vilnius University, Santariskiu 1, 08660 Vilnius, Lithuania. labajura@takas.lt
Abstract:
By applying electric pulses to tumor the membrane of tumor cells undergoes destabilization that enables the drug molecules to enter into the cells more freely and selectivity of anticancer drugs increases. Thus, administering smaller doses of anticancer drugs it might be possible to achieve a better therapeutic effect and to reduce side effects of cytostatic therapy. Such combination of chemotherapy with electric pulses is called electrochemotherapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the anticancer effectiveness of single and repeated courses of electrochemotherapy with three different anticancer agents (cyclophosphamide, carboplatinum and bleomycin) using experimental animals. It was established that electrochemotherapy used as a single treatment the best increases cytotoxicity of bleomycin. While applying the electrochemotherapy course for 5 days all investigated anticancer drugs showed higher cytotoxicity as compared to the effect of these cytostatics without electroporation. It is notable that in this case antitumor effect of bleomycin was the highest--99% of treated tumors showed a high response rate and no recurrence was observed for 30 days.
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