Nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma: A novel locoregional ablation decreasing lung metastasis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive malignancy. Nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) is a new technology destroying tumor cells with a non-thermal high voltage electric field using ultra-short pulses. The study's aim was to evaluate the ablation efficacy of nsPEFs with human HCC cell lines and a highly metastatic potential HCC xenograft model on BALB/c nude mice. The in vivo study showed nsPEFs induced HCC cell death in a dose dependent manner. On the high metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (HCCLM3) xenograft mice model, tumor growth was inhibited significantly in nsPEF-treated- groups (single dose and multi-fractionated dose). Besides a local effect, the nsPEF treatment reduced pulmonary metastases. The nsPEFs also enhanced HCC cell phagocytosis by human macrophage cell (THP1) in vitro. The nsPEF is efficient in controlling HCC progression and reducing its metastasis. NsPEF treatment may elicit a host immune response against tumor cells. This study suggests nsPEF therapy could be used as a potential locoregional therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma.