Electrochemotherapy with interleukin-12 gene electrotransfer can turn local tumor ablation into a systemic antitumor response in veterinary patients

Veterinary medicine serves as an important translational bridge between preclinical studies and human medicine, offering a valuable model for investigating naturally occurring diseases and generating data unattainable from purely experimental animal models. This is particularly relevant for evaluating novel cancer treatment approaches. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) and gene electrotransfer represent 2 such approaches in both human and veterinary clinical oncology. Current evidence indicates that ECT achieves excellent local ablative control of treated tumors; however, its principal limitation is that ECT does not reliably control untreated or metastatic disease. One strategy to overcome this limitation is combining ECT with the systemic immunomodulatory action of IL-12 gene electrotransfer as both modalities rely on the same platform technology, electroporation. In veterinary medicine, this combined approach has been successfully applied across various tumor types in dogs, demonstrating excellent local antitumor control alongside indications of systemic effects. These have been clinically associated with prolonged survival, regression of distant untreated tumors and lymph node metastases, and reduced invasive tumor growth. Immunological studies are also consistent with systemic immune activation, with flow cytometry analysis of peripheral blood demonstrating transient increases in circulating CD8+ cells following each therapeutic session. Further studies are needed to find the suitable biomarkers for selecting the appropriate patients for the selected treatments.