Magnetoporation: New Method for Permeabilization of Cancerous Cells to Hydrophilic Drugs

In the present study, we investigated the application of pulsed magnetic field (MF) (3.5 T, 1 Hz, 8 square-wave/160 µs) permeabilization on murine breast adenocarcinoma cells when administering bleomycin (BLM) in vivo.

This cross-over study aims to find a noninvasive method to facilitate penetration of hydrophilic anti-cancer drugs through the cancerous cells membrane into the cytosoll in order to minimize the side effects of the chemotherapy treatments of tumors.

In this cross-over study, a total of 50 female Balb/c mice were tumorized via homograft. After about 2 weeks, magnetic pulses (3.5 T, 1 Hz, 8 square-wave/160 µs) were applied to tumor-bearing mice 3 min after intratumoral BLM solution injection. Tumor volume was measured every 48 h during 22 days.

The results showed that the difference between the BLM plus 3.5 T MF group versus the sham control or sham MF groups was significant. Uptake of BLM molecules by tumoral cells in the BLM plus 3.5 T MF group versus the BLM control group was 7- folds higher that this result was statistically insignificant (p <0.05, SEM=266.8676, analysis of variance).

Significant cell permeabilization to BLM requires greater MF strength or exposure time. Further investigation is necessary.