An in vitro study of electroporation of leukemia and cervical cancer cells

Cancer therapies mainly target the uncontrolled proliferation of the cancerous cells. A translational therapy for inoperable, chemo– and radio-resistant tumors is electroporation-based chemotherapy, known as electrochemotherapy, a physical means of using electrical pulses in conjunction with minimal doses of the chemo drug to achieve proliferation control. It is applicable to all histologies of tumors and its efficacy depends on a variety of factors, including the electric field intensity, the pulse duration and the number of pulses. In this chapter, we describe the optimization of pulse parameters for effective electroporation of leukemic and cervical cancer cell lines. Human promyelocytic leukemia (HL60), human acute myeloid leukemia (KG1) and human cervical (ME180) cancer cell lines were subjected to electroporation in the presence of various doses of FDA approved chemo drug, Bleomycin. The effect of curcumin and electroporation is also tested for HL60 cells. The results indicate that by using electroporation, chemo drug molecules could be uploaded into these cells to control proliferation. This promises to be a very useful tool for treating patients suffering from chemo-refractive tumors.