[Antitumor electro-chemotherapy].

We summarize the way which, starting at the electropermeabilization of cultured cells, a technique currently used in molecular and cellular biology, had led up to the electrochemotherapy, the new antitumor treatment that we have designed at the Institut Gustave-Roussy. Electrochemotherapy consists in intravenous administration of a low dose of bleomycin followed by local delivery of electric pulses on tumor nodules by means of two electrodes located at each side of the nodule. We describe the basis of the electrochemotherapy and we report the results obtained in mice and in clinical trials. Lastly we discuss the reasons for which electrochemotherapy, a treatment relevant to some precise clinical situations, might be widely instrumental in the treatment of cancer.