Electrochemotherapy: an emerging cancer treatment

The aim of this review article is to provide a concise overview of the pre-clinical development of electrochemotherapy (ECT), its present utility in clinical practice and to examine its potential application to therapeutic modalities in the future.

Results from the ESOPE trial demonstrate an 85% objective response rate (ORR) in solid cutaneous and subcutaneous tumours of varying histologies, that would previously have been recalcitrant to conventional therapies. Experimentally, neoadjuvant immunogene therapy of primary cancers has been found to be effective against minimal residual disease in metastatic models. As such, combinations of electrogene delivery and electrochemothearpy offer exciting possibilities for both local and systemic control of heretofore incurable cancers.

Electrochemotherapy is a quick, safe, inexpensive treatment modality that has been shown to give consistently reproducible results in the treatment of solid cutaneous and subcutaneous malignant tumours. To date, its clinical license has limited its application to a palliative setting. Future work includes looking to extend this therapeutic profile to the management of primary tumours and earlier stage disease, as well as examining the potential for combining electrochemotherapy with gene and immunotherapies and developing novel electrode designs to facilitate the application of this treatment to internal cancers.