electrochemotherapy – Senator Medical AB

Surgery or Electrochemotherapy?

admin — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 14:15:13 +0000

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) are the commonest cutaneous malignancy and incidence continues to increase. There is a need to expand the therapeutic toolbox to increase options for patients that are unsuitable for or unwilling to undergo the current therapies.

Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a technique where cells are temporarily permeabilized after exposure to a brief pulsed electrical field and combined with low dose chemotherapeutics to ablate malignancies. It is a simple technique causing minimal damage to the surrounding healthy tissue and has the potential to avoid the need for complex reconstruction. ECT is an established treatment for skin metastases but its role as a primary treatment modality is not demonstrated.

Comparative study between ElectroChemotherapy Vs Surgery

A prospective randomised control trial evaluating ECT against the gold standard of treatment, Surgery, was performed for patients with primary BCC and patients followed for 5 years. All lesions treated with ECT (n = 69) responded although 8/69 (12%) needed a second treatment to ensure a complete response. All surgical lesions (n = 48) showed histological evidence of complete excision with 2/48 (4%) undergoing a second excision. At 5 years, in the surgical arm there was no evidence of recurrence in 39/40 (97.5%) lesions with 1/40 (2.5%) confirmed recurrence. In the ECT arm there was no evidence of recurrence in 42/48 lesions (87.5%). There was 5 confirmed recurrences. These groups show statistical equivalence in this non inferiority study design (p = 0.33).

ECT is an effective and durable treatment option for primary BCC and should be considered as part of the armamentarium of options available.

Reference:

Read the original article on Elsevier Journal

Who can take benefit of Electrochemotherapy? Simply explained!

admin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 13:39:48 +0000

What is electrochemotherapy?

Electrochemotherapy is a way of getting specific chemotherapy drug into cancer cells.

It is a combination of:

Chemotherapy injected into the tumour or bloodstream
Aan electric pulse to send the chemotherapy into the cancer cells (called electroporation)

A special probe sends an electric pulse to the tumour. The electric pulse changes the outer layer of the cancer cell. This makes it easier for the chemotherapy to get inside the cell.

Who can have electrochemotherapy?

Doctors use electrochemotherapy for cancers that started in the skin or have spread to the skin from elsewhere. These include:

Basal and squamous cell skin cancers
Melanoma skin cancer
Kaposi’s sarcoma
Breast cancer that has spread to the skin
Head and neck cancers that have spread to the skin

Electrochemotherapy has been approved by many of European Health Authorities including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a possible treatment to relieve symptoms for people with cancers affecting their skin. It can help to control symptoms when other treatments are no longer working.

Most people who have this treatment have shown improvement in their symptoms. How much it helps varies from one person to another. You might need more than one treatment to control your symptoms.

Research is looking into finding out more about how well it works and which patients it can help.

Having electrochemotherapy

You usually have electrochemotherapy as a day patient. But occasionally people need to stay in hospital overnight. You will have either a general anaesthetic, so you are asleep, or you might have a local anaesthetic with a drug to make you sleepy (sedation).

You have chemotherapy as either:

An injection into the tumour (intratumoural)
An injection into your bloodstream through a small tube (intravenously)

The type of chemotherapy you might have is either Cisplatin or Bleomycin. You have much lower dose than with standard chemotherapy treatment. This is because the electric pulse helps the chemotherapy get through the cell wall. Lower doses of chemotherapy mean fewer side effects.

Injection into the tumour

You might have this treatment awake with a local anasethetic to numb the area or you might be asleep (general anasethetic).

First you have an injection of local anaesthetic to numb the area. The doctor then injects the chemotherapy and you have the electric pulse immediately afterwards.

Injection into a vein

You usually need to have this while you are asleep, under general anaesthetic.

You have the chemotherapy into a vein. Then eight minutes later, you have the electric pulse to the tumour.

The electric pulse comes from a special machine. Attached to the machine is a probe. The probe is the size of a large pen and has an electrode on it. The doctor puts the electrode against your skin to deliver an electric pulse to the tumour.

Your whole treatment can take between 10 and 60 minutes, depending on how many tumours you have.

Side effects of electrochemotherapy

The main side effect is pain in the area where the electrode touches the skin. This is usually mild and lasts for a couple of days. More rarely some people have more severe pain that can last between two and four weeks. Your doctor or clinical nurse specialist will give you some painkillers if you need them.

Some people have muscle contractions during the treatment. Your doctor can slightly alter the way they give treatment if this is uncomfortable. You may also feel sick but this is usually mild and you can have anti sickness medicines. Infection in the area you have treatment is rare. Tell your doctor if you notice the area has become redder, swollen, painful or if there is any discharge.

You might notice the colour of your skin changes where you had treatment. It might be darker or lighter. This usually fades with time but can be permanent for some people.

The area where you have treatment can form an ulcer or the skin might breakdown. If this happens you will need a nurse to dress it until it heals. This might take a couple of weeks.

Research into electrochemotherapy

So far, researchers have used electrochemotherapy to control symptoms of advanced skin cancers when other treatments aren’t working.

In the future, researchers hope that electrochemotherapy could become a treatment for early skin cancers. But we need to compare it with the current standard treatments and this can take many years.

Researchers are also looking into using electric pulses to treat cancers in body cavities. These include early bladder cancers and cancers in the chest. This treatment in body cavities is called electromotive drug administration.

Reference: Cancer Research, UK, 2019

Increase of survival & immunoresponse enhancement with ElectroChemotherapy in Lung & Colorectal cancer in mural models-2019

admin — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:43:07 +0000

Electrochemotherapy

Is an emerging treatment modality for cancer patients which can effectively reduce tumour burden and induce immunogenic cell death. Electrochemotherapy is most commonly used with bleomycin as the drug of choice, here we examine the efficacy of electrochemotherapy with cisplatin. Electrochemotherapy with cisplatin was found to effectively reduce tumour growth in a range of murine models and induce significant intratumoural recruitment of myeloid and humoral immune cells. Following the observations of immune system mobilisation, we have shown an ability of electrochemotherapy to reduce metastatic potential as determined by tumour burden in the lung, and to exert an abscopal effect by reducing growth at distal untreated secondary tumours.

What drugs are being used most in ElectroChemotherapy? Bleomycin & Cisplatin

Highlights

• ECT with cisplatin is an effective form of therapy showing significant decrease in cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo.•

• Immune cell mobilisation is visible locally and systemically following treatment.•

• ECT with cisplatin may be useful in reducing the growth of distal untreated growth and controlling metastatic disease.

Read the entire article on this LINK

Reference:

Cancer Letters

Volume 442, 1 February 2019, Pages 475-482

Promising results of Electrochemotherapy as a potential treatment for pancreatic cancer

admin — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 09:44:14 +0000

Treatment of pancreatic cancer might be enhanced by zapping tumours with electricity alongside drug treatments (Bleomycin or Cisplatin)

Electrochemotherapy delivers short, intense pulses of electricity to a tumour, which temporarily increase how porous cancer cells are, allowing more drugs to flood inside.

The technique is currently used to treat skin cancers and some breast cancers, which can easily be reached by the electrodes needed to deliver the pulses of electricity.

Researchers at CancerResearch@UCC have found that a technique known as electrochemotherapy causes pancreatic cancer cells to become more sensitive to three widely used anti-cancer drugs.

With PCRF funding, Dr Patrick Forde – who led the research – is investigating whether it can be used for tumours in the pancreas, deep inside the body.

The results also revealed that the cells died in a specific way that may have implications for how the immune system responds to the cancer cells after the drug treatment.

Keywords: #electrochemotherapy #pancreatic cancer

Reference: Read full article

Electrochemotherapy – A locoregional therapy with well-established palliative effect in patient with large recurrent lesion of head and neck

admin — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:31:38 +0000

Highlights

• The aim was to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of electrochemotherapy in the palliative setting in patients with head and neck malignancies, with no other therapeutic option.
• Thirty-six patients were admitted to protocol.
• An overall response of 100% was observed. In all patient, an improvement of quality of life in terms of pain, bleeding events and need for medical assistance or dressing.
• ECT can improve quality of life with limited side effects.

Background

Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a well established treatment strategy for skin tumors of different histology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of electrochemotherapy in the palliative setting in patients with head and neck malignancies, already treated with surgery and/or radio-chemotherapy with no other therapeutic option.

Methods

Thirty-six patients with a loco-regional M0/M1 relapse with no other therapeutic option not suitable for a cure with a radical intent by surgery or RT and not suitable for systemic therapy and/or already treated with it, were admitted to electrochemotherapy (ECT) protocol treatment. ECT was performed according ESOPE guidelines. Clinical features, treatment response, and adverse effects were evaluated 15, 30 days and then every months after the treatment.

Results

An overall response of 100% was observed. Only 3 patients out 36 showed a CR. Overall survival probability at 12 months was 41.6% (median OS: 9 months). In all patient, an improvement of quality of life in terms of pain, bleeding events were observed, while need for medical assistance or dressing was significantly reduced 1 month after electrochemotherapy (p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Electrochemotherapy is an effective palliative treatment of non-resectable head and neck malignancies able. Due to the ECT limited side effects, its early use would be desirable to obtain a better local control of the disease and improve quality of life of patients.

Reference: Science Direct

Importance of Body image for women (Breast Cancer Article)

admin — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 12:23:05 +0000

Body image in women with breast cancer using a scalp cooling system to reduce chemotherapy induced hair-loss

Background: Most women consider hair to be an important part of body image. Alopecia is an emotionally traumatic side effect for breast cancer patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy. The DigniCap Scalp Cooling System is the first scalp cooling system cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy induced alopecia.

Methods: Quality of Life (QOL) data were collected as part of a prospective clinical trial evaluating the clinical performance of scalp cooling in women with early stage BC receiving adjuvant chemotherapy.

The study’s primary endpoint was hair loss as evaluated by patient self-assessment. Treatment success was defined as ≤ 50% hair loss. QOL was evaluated by the EORTC-QLQ-BR23 (BR23) administered at baseline, last chemotherapy cycle, and one month later. For BR23, 4 response categories were collapsed to 2 categories (Not at all/A little bit and Quite a bit/Very much) for analysis. QOL was compared between those with success vs. failure of scalp cooling.

Results: 101 patients were evaluable for the primary endpoint: Success was seen in 67 (66.3%) pts. QOL at study entry was comparable between pts with scalp cooling success or failure for each item in the BR23 questionnaire. Results reported as percentages of patients in each group who answered either quite a bit or very much to body image-related questions on the BR23 questionnaire are displayed in Table 1.

Conclusions: Women with breast cancer using scalp cooling during chemotherapy who had hair preservation experienced improved quality of life, according to self-assessment of body image, compared to women who had significant hair loss.

Reference: Cancer Research Journal

Facts about Melanoma; 2019

admin — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:37:12 +0000

An estimated 192,310 cases of Melanoma will be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2019.

If #melanoma is recognized and treated early, it is almost always curable. See the video for more information on Melanoma and our wonderful possibilities to face with it (click to see the video)

Source: Skin Cancer Foundation

Electrochemotherapy in Veterinary Oncology

admin — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 10:43:39 +0000

Cancer cases-Veterinary sector

Achieving local tumor control in veterinary patients with cancer affected by solid neoplasms represents one of the major challenges for veterinary oncologists, frequently due to late referrals or rapid tumor growth.This clinical presentation often prevents the achievement of local control with surgery alone, needing a multimodality approach involving adjuvant therapies, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or electrochemotherapy (ECT).

KEYWORDS

Bleomycin
Carcinoma
Cisplatin
Electroporation & Electrochemotherapy
Mast cell tumor
Pets
Sarcoma

KEY POINTS

The cell membrane is the major obstacle to be overcome by chemotherapy agents in order to reach their biological targets. This is especially true for lipophobic agents like Bleomycin.
Electroporation is a technique that greatly increases the uptake of such drugs by tumors. The combination of permeabilizing pulses and chemotherapy is called electrochemotherapy (ECT).
Electrochemotherapy has been successfully used in combination with Bleomycin and Cisplatin to treat solid tumors such as carcinoma, sarcoma, and hematologic malignancies such as mast cell tumor.
Novel applications include the treatment of visceral tumors under ultrasonographic guidance and the delivery of molecular compounds such as oligonucleotides, plasmids, and small proteins.

electrochemotherapy – Senator Medical AB

Surgery or Electrochemotherapy?

A randomised control trial comparing electrochemotherapy and surgery with five year follow up for primary basal cell carcinoma

Comparative study between ElectroChemotherapy Vs Surgery

Reference:

Who can take benefit of Electrochemotherapy? Simply explained!

What is electrochemotherapy?

Who can have electrochemotherapy?

Having electrochemotherapy

Injection into the tumour

Injection into a vein

Side effects of electrochemotherapy

Research into electrochemotherapy

Increase of survival & immunoresponse enhancement with ElectroChemotherapy in Lung & Colorectal cancer in mural models-2019

Electrochemotherapy

Highlights

Cancer Letters

Promising results of Electrochemotherapy as a potential treatment for pancreatic cancer

Electrochemotherapy – A locoregional therapy with well-established palliative effect in patient with large recurrent lesion of head and neck

Highlights

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Importance of Body image for women (Breast Cancer Article)

Body image in women with breast cancer using a scalp cooling system to reduce chemotherapy induced hair-loss

Facts about Melanoma; 2019

An estimated 192,310 cases of Melanoma will be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2019.

Electrochemotherapy in Veterinary Oncology

Cancer cases-Veterinary sector

KEYWORDS

KEY POINTS