What is it about?
to obtain light-activated anticancer compounds, a balance should be found between the stability in the dark and the photoreactivity. Compounds that are too stable in the dark may be not photoreactive enough. On the other hand, making too photo reactive compounds may also lead to diminishing the dark stability, which lower the ability of the compound to be really "triggered" by light (because it is triggered already in the dark). The best, optimum case, is when there is just enough of photoreactivity, combined to a good stability in the dark. We provide here a real-life example of this fine-tuning process.
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Why is it important?
It is often believed that making compounds more photoreactive is the only requirement to obtain light-activated medicines. We demonstrate that there is no free lunch - too much photoreactivity also influences the dark reactivity. Thus, both dark and light reactivity must be fine-tuned at the same time.
Perspectives
Light-activated medicines may represent a future generation of medicines that don't do anything unless they are activated by simply blue, green, or red light inside the body. Before this happens, we need to understand how they are activated, not only in a test tube, but in real living cells.
Dr Sylvestre Bonnet
Universiteit Leiden
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ruthenium-based PACT compounds based on an N,S non-toxic ligand: a delicate balance between photoactivation and thermal stability, December 2017, Association Science2 (Science Squared),
DOI: 10.28954/2017.csq.12.002.
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