The use of high-frequency short bipolar pulses in cisplatin electrochemotherapy in vitro
Article Category: Research Article
Published Online: Jun 01, 2019
Page range: 194 - 205
Received: Feb 04, 2019
Accepted: Apr 23, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/raon-2019-0025
© 2019 Maria Scuderi, Matej Rebersek, Damijan Miklavcic, Janja Dermol-Cerne, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Background
In electrochemotherapy (ECT), chemotherapeutics are first administered, followed by short 100 μs monopolar pulses. However, these pulses cause pain and muscle contractions. It is thus necessary to administer muscle relaxants, general anesthesia and synchronize pulses with the heart rhythm of the patient, which makes the treatment more complex. It was suggested in ablation with irreversible electroporation, that bursts of short high-frequency bipolar pulses could alleviate these problems. Therefore, we designed our study to verify if it is possible to use high-frequency bipolar pulses (HF-EP pulses) in electrochemotherapy.
Materials and methods
We performed
Results
With both types of pulses, the combination of electric pulses and cisplatin was more efficient in killing cells than cisplatin or electric pulses only. However, we needed to apply a higher electric field in HF-EP (3 kV/cm) than in ECT (1.2 kV/cm) to obtain comparable cytotoxicity.
Conclusions
It is possible to use HF-EP in electrochemotherapy; however, at the expense of applying higher electric fields than in classical ECT. The results obtained, nevertheless, offer an evidence that HF-EP could be used in electrochemotherapy with potentially alleviated muscle contractions and pain.