Yang Guo1, Yue Zhang2,3, Ning
Jin2,4, Jodi Nicolai2, Rachel Klein2,
Guang-Yu Yang5, Reed Omary2,4, Andrew Larson2,4
1Radiology, Northwestern
University, Chicago, IL, United States; 2Department of Radiology, Northwestern
University, Chicago, IL, United States; 3Biomedical Engineering ,
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States; 4Department
of Biomedical Engineering , Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United
States; 5Department of Pathology, Northwestern University,
Chicago, IL, United States
Electropermeabilization involves application of electrical pulses to increase cell membrane permeability; electrochemotherapy (ECT) takes advantage of this phenomenon to increase tumor uptake of chemotherapeutic drugs. The timing of drug infusion and application of electrical pulses is critical to optimize the ECT procedure. The purpose of this study in rat hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) model was to demonstrate the potential to use dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI for intra-procedural optimization and monitoring during intra-hepatic ECT.We found that ECT treated tumors showed reduction in tumor perfusion and a significant increase of cisplatin uptake compared to the internal control tumors. Our findings suggest that ECT permits superior chemotherapeutic drug uptake within targeted HCC compared to conventional chemotherapy in the N1-S1 rodent model. Dynamic contrast enhance MRI shows the potential to allow patient-specific adjustments to ECT timing parameters for optimal drug delivery to targeted hepatic tumors and monitoring of electroporation related vascular lock perfusion changes.