Cancers Cured by Minimally Invasive Irreversible Electroporation Treatment

A recent publication described the use of irreversible electroporation (IRE) as a minimally invasive surgical technique to selectively destroy cancer cells while leaving surrounding structural tissues and blood vessels undamaged.

Irreversible electroporation uses electrical pulses to poke holes in cell membranes that do not reseal, causing the cells to die. IRE utilizes a range of electrical current that causes permanent damage to cell membranes without generating heat and thermal damage. Investigators at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel) performed the IRE surgical technique on 14 healthy female pigs under general anesthesia, using the same procedures as if the patients were human.

Results published in the February 2007 issue of Technology in Cancer Research and Treatment revealed that selected cell membranes were destroyed, while untargeted adjacent tissue healed remarkably quickly. Although the tissue chosen for destruction in this study was healthy, the investigators had found in a prior cell culture study that IRE effectively killed human liver cancer tissue.

"I have been working in this area of minimally invasive surgery for 30 years now,” said senior author Dr. Boris Rubinsky, professor of bioengineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "This concept of reversible electroporation really caught on in modern biotechnology, especially over the last decade. It is used primarily to help get genes and drugs into cells. The field of irreversible electroporation was pretty much forgotten. I truly think that this will be viewed as one of the most important advances in the treatment of tumors in years. I am very excited about the potential of this technique. It may have tremendous applications in many areas of medicine and surgery.”


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Hebrew University of Jerusalem