Electrical Stimulation may Improve Cancer Treatment

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Could cancer cells be shocked into accepting drugs aimed at killing them?

It's possible; report Cleveland Clinic researchers who used electrical stimulation to induce cancer cells resistant to a standard chemotherapy drug to take up the medication.

The laboratory study was carried out using samples of both rat and human tumor cells that were over-expressing a certain protein that was making them fight off the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. Researchers exposed the samples to low intensity alternating current pulses every ten seconds over a three day period.

The level of the electrical stimulation used in the study is considered too low to cause any damage to normal cells.

After three days of stimulation, the cells were then exposed to slowly increasing doses of the chemotherapy drug. Results showed even lower doses of the drug caused the death of the cancer cells, indicating the electrical stimulation had, indeed, made them sensitive to the medication. The electrical stimulation strategy proved more effective in inducing the death of the cancer cells than standard treatment aimed at inhibiting the production of the protein.

"Our data strongly support a potential clinical application of electrical stimulation to enhance the efficacy of currently available chemotherapeutic protocols," study authors say.

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SOURCE: BMC Cancer, published online March 16, 2006