Title:Electrochemotherapy as First Line Cancer Treatment: Experiences from Veterinary Medicine in Developing Novel Protocols
Volume: 16
Issue: 1
Author(s): E. P. Spugnini, T. Azzarito, S. Fais, M. Fanciulli and A. Baldi
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Adjuvant, bleomycin, cisplatin, electroporation, neoadjuvant, pets, therapeutic index.
Abstract: Tumor microenvironment is one of the major obstacles to the efficacy of chemotherapy in
cancer patients. The abnormal blood flow within the tumor results in uneven drug distribution.
Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a tumor treatment that adopts the systemic or local delivery of
anticancer drugs with the application of permeabilizing electric pulses having appropriate amplitude
and waveforms. This allows the use of lipophobic drugs that frequently have a narrow therapeutic
index maintaining at the same time a reduced patient morbidity and preserving appropriate anticancer efficacy. Its use in
humans is addressed to the treatment of cutaneous neoplasms or the palliation of skin tumor metastases, and a standard
operating procedure has been devised. On the other hand, in veterinary oncology this approach is gaining popularity, thus
becoming a first line treatment for different cancer histotypes, in a variety of clinical conditions due to its high efficacy
and low toxicity. This review summarizes the state of the art in veterinary oncology as a preclinical model and reports the
new protocols in terms of drugs and therapy combination that have been developed.
