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Electric Pulses Being Used To Kill Cancer

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Rafael V. Davalos, a faculty member of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences is a developer of the cancer-fighting technique called irreversible electroporation.

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Published: August 20, 2008

Using electrical pulses to destroyed cancer cells while sparing surrounding tissue for collateral damage is in the early phase of human testing.

The technology, dubbed irreversible electroporation, was invented by Rafael V. Davalos, a faculty member of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, and Boris Rubinsky, a bioengineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

After IRE showed the ability to kill cancer cells in preclinical testing involving laboratory mice, the technique was the subject of a pilot study in April on five people on soft tissue in the prostate to prove the safety of the procedure on humans. Rubinsky conducted the test in collaboration with Dr. Gary Onik, a radiologist with the Florida Hospital, in Orlando.

In electroporation electric pulses increases the permeability of a cell's membrane from none to a reversible opening to an irreversible opening. Once the irreversible opening is achieved the cells dies.

The IRE procedure involves placing small needles near the targeted region. The needles deliver a series of low-energy microsecond electric pulses to the targeted tissue and the area treated can be monitored in real time using ultrasound. In laboratory testing, IRE destroyed targeted tissue with sub-millimeter resolution, and it proved easy to control and to be precise.

Furthermore, "The procedure spares nerves and major blood vessels, enabling treatment in otherwise inoperable areas," says Davalos, the 2006 recipient of the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award for Most Promising Engineer.

As Davalos and his colleagues reported in the November 2007 issue of PLoS ONE, IRE achieved complete regression of targeted cells in 92 percent of the treated tumors in the preclinical mouse models. These results were achieved with a single treatment that lasted less than five minutes.

Davalos' research was assisted by a $240,000 grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and $25,000 from the Wake Forest Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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