Subconjunctival Carboplatin Therapy and Cryotherapy in the Treatment of Transgenic Murine Retinoblastoma

Diagnosis and current management of retinoblastoma

“…Local delivery of chemotherapeutic agents (carboplatin) by periocular (subtenon) or intraocular injections has been experimented in animals (Murray et al, 1997;Van Quill et al, 2005) and used in selected retinoblastoma patients with some success. It is not, however, without risk and at the present time does in no way Diagnosis and current management of retinoblastoma A Balmer et al present an alternative to systemic chemotherapy.…”

Diagnosis and Management of Retinoblastoma

“…Animal models have shown that carboplatin penetrates the sclera into the vitreous cavity, allowing for effective higher dosages at that site. [46][47][48][49] Initially, subconjunctival carboplatin alone …”

The Use of Preclinical Models to Improve the Treatment of Retinoblastoma

“…Similar to the clinical trials, there have been many reports studying the use of focal therapy treatment, such as EBRT and cryotherapy, alone or in combination with chemotherapy treatments or chemotherapy alone in the large T antigen mouse model [64,118]. From these studies it appeared that the combination of focal therapy and the combination of carboplatin with EBRT had the most success.…”

“…A direct intravitreal injection was not feasible because of the risk of damaging the eye and the possibility disseminating tumor cells. Nevertheless, researchers circumvented this obstacle with by injecting in the surrounding orbital area [61][62][63][64]. Based on these studies, Abramson!s group conducted a clinical study which treated patients with only subconjunctival injections of carboplatin [65].…”

“…Other preclinical studies with retinoblastoma mouse models have used focal therapies, such as EBRT and cryotherapy, and found them to disrupt the blood-ocular barrier, increasing drug delivery [64,118,156]. Ideally, the use of cryotherapy is more attractive than EBRT due to the risks to patients with germline mutations.…”