Electrochemotherapy with Bleomycin in the Treatment of Hypernephroma Metastasis: Case Report and Literature Review

Abstract

A metastasis of hypernephroma was treated by electrochemotherapy with bleomycin. Electrochemotherapy consists of chemotherapy followed by local application of electric pulses to the tumor in order to increase drug delivery to the cells. In the course of a four-week treatment period, the subcutaneous metastasis of the hypernephroma was treated with three sessions of electrochemotherapy, each consisting of 9-10 runs of 8 electric pulses, 10 min after intravenous injection of bleomycin. This treatment resulted in stabilization of the tumor volume for 12 months, whereas the subcutaneous metastasis next to the electrochemotherapy-treated one that did not receive electric pulses progressed immediately.

Electrochemotherapy with cisplatin of cutaneous tumor lesions in breast cancer

“…The patients included into these studies were mainly treated for malignant melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and a few individual patients with adenocarcinoma and Kaposi's sarcoma [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The study performed on s.c. tumor lesions of the patients with clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the kidney demonstrated that this treatment is also effective for cancer that is generally resistant to systemic chemotherapy [11]. The chemotherapeutics that were applied in the above clinical studies were bleomycin and cisplatin [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

The Role of Electrochemotherapy in the Treatment of Malignant Melanoma

“…These first 8 patients were treated for squamous cell carcinoma tumors and a complete response (CR) was observed in 57% of the lesions. These early publications encouraged other investigators to expand the principles of this technique to other tumor types including basal cell carcinomas, Kaposi sarcoma, and melanoma metastases 6,62,[71][72][73][74] . By the mid 90's, Rudolf et al 71 and Heller et al 73 published the results of an initial small group (5) of melanoma patients that underwent treatment with ECT and IV Bleomycin.…”

Physical mechanisms and methods employed in drug delivery to tumors

“…Over a period longer than 12 weeks, they showed a 78% objective response rate in the patients treated with bleomycin/ECT, which was significantly higher than the 32% response rate observed in the patients treated with bleomycin alone. Sersa et al (100) reported that a metastasis of hypernephroma could be successfully treated with ECT with bleomycin. ECT treatment resulted in stabilization of the tumor volume for 12 months, whereas the subcutaneous metastasis next to the ECT-treated one that did not receive electric pulses progressed immediately.…”