OT - Cancer - Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) is potential alternative to surgery or radiotherapy

[Guest guest]

This holds some promise,

Cris

.............

Alfred Hospital trials painless treatment for cancer

Bradford

November 24, 2008 01:45pm

A REVOLUTIONARY painless technique that uses electrical pulses to zap

tumours is being trialled at The Alfred hospital to treat cancer.

Radiologists at the Melbourne hospital say Irreversible Electroporation

(IRE) has the potential to provide an alternative to surgery or

radiotherapy.

The technique involves using a device called an IRE-Nanoknife to accurately

place fine needle electrodes in or around the tumour, which is then

targeted with short intense electric pulses.

Ken Thomson, The Alfred's Professor of Radiology, said the technique is

" remarkable " and could very possibly replace chemotherapy in the future.

" We're on the way to proving the safety of it, " Dr Thomson told reporters

on Monday.

" But we haven't really got a technique that we can say guarantees this

would be as good as surgery. We're some months or years away from that

point. "

He is confident about its potential, but refused to go as far as to call it

a cure for cancer.

" I'm trying to stay calm, I'm extremely excited about it because I think it

has enormous potential, but I don't want to raise false hopes among the

public that I've suddenly got a cure that no one else has. "

The treatment creates microscopic holes in the wall of the tumour cells,

causing the cells to die before they are removed by the body.

Seventeen prostate cancer patients have been treated in America using the

technique, which gave Dr Thomson the confidence it would work in Australia.

So far he has treated a liver cancer patient and one with kidney cancer.

What surprised Dr Thomson was how painless the procedure was, with patients

reporting no negative effects after undergoing the treatment.

There are many more positives.

" It's very quick, it doesn't appear to cause any damage to the surrounding

tissue, the tissue appears to grow back normally without blocking arteries

and veins and (IRE) appears to have a wide ability to treat a solid tumour,

and no pain afterwards, there's very little bad about it, " he said.

IRE also is very low risk, with needles placed on the tumour in 40-second

bursts.

" I think personally it's a breakthrough because of the lack of surrounding

damage. "

The nerves, blood vessels and tissues have all come out unscathed in

patients treated during trials.

Tumours start shrinking almost straight away and are half the size in just

two weeks.

Eighteen patients are taking part in the trial, while Dr Thomson has

funding to treat up to 100 patients.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24697832-953,00.html

Tumor Ablation with Irreversible Electroporation

Bassim Al-Sakere,1,2 Franck André,1,2 Bernat,1,2 beth

Connault,1,2 e Opolon,1,2 V. Davalos,3 Boris Rubinsky,4,5,6 and

Lluis M. Mir,1,2*

1CNRS UMR 8121, Institut Gustave-Roussy, Villejuif, France

2University Paris-Sud, UMR 8121, Villejuif, France

3School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virginia Tech-Wake Forest

University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

4Department of Bioengineering, University of California at Berkeley,

Berkeley, California, United States of America

5Department of Mechanical Engineering and Graduate Program in Biophysics,

University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States

of America

6Center for Bioengineering in the Service of Humanity and Society, School

of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat

Ram, Jerusalem, Israel

Mark Isalan, Academic Editor

Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: luismir/at/igr.fr

Conceived and designed the experiments: BR LM RD. Performed the

experiments: PO BA FA CB EC. Analyzed the data: PO BR LM BA FA RD.

Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PO. Wrote the paper: BR LM

RD.

Received September 4, 2007; Accepted October 9, 2007.

We report the first successful use of irreversible electroporation for the

minimally invasive treatment of aggressive cutaneous tumors implanted in

mice. Irreversible electroporation is a newly developed non-thermal tissue

ablation technique in which certain short duration electrical fields are

used to permanently permeabilize the cell membrane, presumably through the

formation of nanoscale defects in the cell membrane. Mathematical models of

the electrical and thermal fields that develop during the application of

the pulses were used to design an efficient treatment protocol with minimal

heating of the tissue. Tumor regression was confirmed by histological

studies which also revealed that it occurred as a direct result of

irreversible cell membrane permeabilization. Parametric studies show that

the successful outcome of the procedure is related to the applied electric

field strength, the total pulse duration as well as the temporal mode of

delivery of the pulses. Our best results were obtained using plate

electrodes to deliver across the tumor 80 pulses of 100 µs at 0.3 Hz with

an electrical field magnitude of 2500 V/cm. These conditions induced

complete regression in 12 out of 13 treated tumors, (92%), in the absence

of tissue heating. Irreversible electroporation is thus a new effective

modality for non-thermal tumor ablation.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2065844