Treatment of rat glioma with electrochemotherapy

The first attempt to apply electrochemotherapy (ECT) to the brain was reported in 1993 by Salford et al. 1993 (1). They managed to significantly prolong the survival of RG2 glioma bearing Fischer-344 rats by 200% by iv administration of bleomycin followed by intracranial electrochemotherapy with exponential decaying pulses. In collaboration with the department of tumor immunology, Lund University, an ethyl-nitroso-urea induced rat glioma cell line (N32) is developed that produces glioma of malignant astrocytoma type with only half the growth rate of the RG2 cells (2). The N32 tumor implanted in rats was treated with intracranial electrochemotherapy and enhanced uptake of [111In]bleomycin from intracranial ECT was also demonstrated with a scintillation camera (3). (111)In-labeled bleomycin has been used to investigate the uptake and retention after ECT treatment of subcutaneous N32 tumors (4).