Electrochemotherapy in pancreatic adenocarcinoma treatment: pre-clinical and clinical studies
Article Category: Review
Published Online: Feb 16, 2016
Page range: 14 - 20
Received: Sep 17, 2015
Accepted: Dec 13, 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/raon-2016-0003
© 2016 Radiol Oncol
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Background
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is currently one of the deadliest cancers with high mortality rate. This disease leads to an aggressive local invasion and early metastases, and is poorly responsive to treatment with chemotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy. Radical resection is still the only curative treatment for pancreatic cancer, but it is generally accepted that a multimodality strategy is necessary for its management. Therefore, new alternative therapies have been considered for local treatment.
Conclusions
Chemotherapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer is associated to a low penetration of drugs into tumour cells due to the presence of fibrotic stroma surrounding cells. In order to increase the uptake of chemotherapeutic drugs into tumour cells, electrochemotherapy can be used for treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma leading to an increased tumour response rate. This review will summarize the published papers reported in literature on the efficacy and safety of electrochemotherapy in pre-clinical and clinical studies on pancreatic cancer.