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Establishing Intratumoral Modulation Therapy As A New Treatment Modality For High Grade Gliomas, Andrew M.A. Deweyert

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and lethal primary brain cancer in adults despite aggressive treatments with surgery and chemo-radiation. Advances in electrotherapeutics offer a foundation for developing new treatment modalities that exploit an innate vulnerability of glioblastoma (GBM). Low intensity, non-ablative electric fields are innocuous to normal neural structure, but incite GBM cell apoptosis by putatively disrupting cytokinesis and transmembrane ion homeostasis. Our collaborative research group is pioneering a new electrotherapeutic technology for GBM called Intratumoral Modulation Therapy (IMT) which uses customized, implanted bioelectrodes to deliver sustained, titratable and focused therapeutic electric fields into tumor-affected brain regions. My work …