The EMDA^® Physionizer Current Generator is a minimally invasive method of enhancing local drug penetration across the urothelium of the bladder and prostatic urethra, resulting in greater quantities of local drug being delivered to a greater tissue depth than is achievable by passive diffusion alone.

It helps to avoid many of the side effects often associated with systemic administration. It is possible that conventional passive MMC administration fails because the T1 disease has invaded to a depth that the drug cannot penetrate by passive transport alone or that higher-grade cancer cells are less chemosensitive.

Improvement in the accumulation of MMC in bladder tissue at greater depths are possible with electromotive drug administration and has been proven both in-vitro and invivo using EMDA^®.

For Hr-NMIBC, the rational for combining anticancer drug has not been applied consistently to the use of intravesical agents for the treatment of superficial bladder cancer, for which immunotherapeutic BCG and chemotherapeutic MMC seem to be a potentially effective combination. An improvement argument might be that BCG-induced inflammation may increase the permeability of the bladder mucosa such that MMC can reach the target tissue more easily and exert its anticancer effect.

Mechanism of Action

The EMDA^® Physionizer Current Generator uses an electric current to accelerate and actively transport ionized molecules into tissues. Altering the electric current intensity can therefore control drug administration. The three main electrokinetic principles are:

• iontophoresis – the transport of ionised molecules into tissue by applying a current across a solution containing the ions
• electro-osmosis – the transport of non-ionised solutes associated with the bulk transport of water, eg Mitomycin-C
• electroporation – a technique in which an electrical field is applied to
  tissue in order to increase its permeability of cell membranes allowing drugs to be
  introduced in to the cells

Product Details

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) currently believes that EMDA^® MMC raises no major safety concerns. The NICE code for this procedure is Y49.9.

EMDA^® Physionizer 30N2 Current Generator

Product Code: 205510