title: Electrochemotherapy: from the drawing board into medical practice.
abstract: Electrochemotherapy is a local treatment of cancer employing electric pulses to improve transmembrane transfer of cytotoxic drugs. In this paper we discuss electrochemotherapy from the perspective of biomedical engineering and review the steps needed to move such a treatment from initial prototypes into clinical practice. In the paper also basic theory of electrochemotherapy and preclinical studies in vitro and in vivo are briefly reviewed. Following this we present a short review of recent clinical publications and discuss implementation of electrochemotherapy into standard of care for treatment of skin tumors, and use of electrochemotherapy for other targets such as head and neck cancer, deep-seated tumors in the liver and intestinal tract, and brain metastases. Electrodes used in these specific cases are presented with their typical voltage amplitudes used in electrochemotherapy. Finally, key points on what should be investigated in the future are presented and discussed.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of electrical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Trzaska 25, Ljubljana SI-1000, Slovenia. damijan.miklavcic@fe.uni-lj.si.
authors.forename: Damijan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Miklavčič
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mali
authors.forename: Bor
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kos
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Heller
authors.forename: Gregor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Serša
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D001698:Biomedical Engineering / Q000379:methods; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology; D053672:Electrochemotherapy / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D004566:Electrodes; D004724:Endoscopy; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000473:pathology
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents