BioElectroMed has been working to develop a non-thermal therapy to ablate tumors implanted in mice with a single treatment Work was started with the B16 murine melanoma allograft model system in which murine melanoma cells injected beneath the skin grow into a melanoma that can be treated with nsPEF. It was found that a single treatment of 2000 pulses, each of 100 ns in duration and 30 kV/cm in amplitude was sufficient to ablate these tumors. The goal was to study the effectiveness of nsPEF to treat more naturally occurring melanomas and this lead to a collaboration with Ed DeFabo who had developed a UV-induced melanoma model using C57/BL6 HGF/SF mice. All 27 melanomas treated in 14 of these mice were successfully ablated using 2000 pulses, each 100 ns long and 30 kV/cm in amplitude. This treatment was called, “non-thermal nanoelectroablation”. All nanoelectroablated melanomas gradually disappeared over a period of 12-29 days. Pyknosis of the nuclei was evident within 1 h and DNA fragmentation as detected by TUNEL staining was evident by 6 h after nsPEF treatment. In addition, we demonstrated that nanoelectroablation stimulated an immune response that actually inhibited secondary tumor formation in an allograft model. Other groups have also reported that apoptotic cells can trigger an immune response
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