Enhanced Antitumor Efficacy Achieved Through Combination of nsPEFs and Low-Dosage Paclitaxel

Looking for a safe and effective cancer therapy for patients is becoming an important and promising research direction. Nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) has been found to be a potential non-thermal therapeutic technique with few side effects in pre-clinical studies. On the other hand, paclitaxel (PTX), as a common chemotherapeutic agent, shows full anti-tumor activities and is used to treat a wide variety of cancers. However, the delivery of PTX is challenging due to its poor aqueous solubility. Hence, high dosages of PTX have been used to achieve effective treatment, which creates some side effects. In this study, nsPEF was combined with low-level PTX, in order to validate if this combined treatment could bring about enhanced efficacy and allow reduced doses of PTX in clinical application. Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and cell cycle distribution were examined using MTT and flow cytometry assay, respectively. Results showed that combination treatments of nsPEF and PTX exhibited significant synergistic effects in vitro. The underlying mechanism might be that these two agents acted at different targets and coordinately enhanced MDA-MB-231 cell death.