Irreversible electroporation: Shock therapy for pancreatic cancer

Rebekah White, MD, is a surgical oncologist and Professor of Surgery at University of California San Diego (UCSD).  She completed medical school and general surgery residency at Duke University. During residency, she worked for three years in thenucleic acid therapeutics laboratory of Bruce Sullenger. After general surgery residency, she completed surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center then returned to Duke as faculty in 2007 and started a lab focused on using aptamers to treat pancreatic cancer. After years of frustration trying to use aptamers for intracellular delivery, she became interested in irreversible electroporation (IRE), both as a clinical therapy for patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer but also for its potential to help overcome some of the barriers to delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics to tumors.  In 2016, she was recruited to UCSD, where her time is divided roughly 50/50 between clinical and research activities. Her NIH-funded laboratory is currently focused on novel therapeutic approaches to pancreatic cancer, including a phase I clinical trial of IRE combined with immunotherapy.