What is it about?
Phthalocyanine dyes have shown good promise in the treatment of cancers using a light-activated technique called photodynamic therapy (PDT). In PDT, high intensity light is used to excite the dyes (sensitizer) producing damaging species only where the therapy is applied and limiting side-effects and reducing the likelyhood of drug resistance. Most dyes currently available, however, can only be used on cancers close to the skin, due to the absorption of light by the body. These new phthalocyanine sensitizers are an attempt to use light that can more easily penetrate into the body, allowing the therapy to be applied to different cancers.
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Why is it important?
Cancer treatments using chemotherapy are very effective, but generally suffer from systemic effects, and are typically prone to drug resistance. Photodynamic therapy could largely overcome these drawbacks. While the dye molecules (photosensitizer) can be applied topically or to the system (the whole body), it only has an effect when excited by high-intensity light of certain wavelengths, therefore the effects are not seen throughout the body (the system), but only at the site of the therapy. Tuning the sensitizer molecule allows us to use wavelengths of light near the red end of the spectrum, which is a "therapeutic window" where light penetrates deeper into our tissue.
Perspectives
The lead author, Dr Moeno, worked in my lab (Rui Krause) and worked at Rhodes University, was also the main scientist undertaking the synthesis and characterisation of the Pc-dyes. Dr Moeno was my first full Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF), and to this day, remains one of the best. She is now an academic member of Wits University's Medical School, and I am very proud to call her a collaborator, together with our co-authors in Germany. This small project has lead to many other useful directions in drug discovery and drug delivery.
Professor Rui Werner Macedo Krause
Rhodes University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Synthesis and characterization of novel zinc phthalocyanines as potential photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy of cancers, Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, June 2014, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1039/c3pp50393c.
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