Electrochemotherapy in pancreatic adenocarcinoma treatment: pre-clinical and clinical studies
Abstract
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.
© 2016 Sabrina Bimonte, Maddalena Leongito, Vincenza Granata, Antonio Barbieri, Vitale del Vecchio, Michela Falco, Aurelio Nasto, Vittorio Albino, Mauro Piccirillo, Raffaele Palaia, Alfonso Amore, Raimondo di Giacomo, Secondo Lastoria, Sergio Venanzio Setola, Roberta Fusco, Antonella Petrillo, Francesco Izzo, published by Association of Radiology and Oncology
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