COMBINATION OF PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY AND OTHER MODALITIES FOR CANCER TREATMENT

Abstract

In recent years, photodynamic therapy (PDT) has attracted considerable attention as an emerging technology for treating cancers. Although much success has been achieved in clinical practice, there are obvious issues to be addressed. First, most of the currently used photosensitizers (PSs) are O2 dependent type II PSs, hindering their therapeutic effect in hypoxia tumor sites. Second, the always-on PSs lack tumor selectivity which induces nonspecific reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in healthy cells and tissues upon exposure to light, causing unexpected side effects. Third, most PSs utilize visible or NIR light as activation source which has a shallow tissue penetration depth, limiting their applications in deep tumors. Last but not least, the conventional sole-modal PDT still suffers from unsatisfactory anticancer efficiency. In this thesis, I focus on the development of PSs and nanoplatforms to address the above-mentioned issues of PDT-based cancer therapy.