Using X-rays in photodynamic therapy: an overview.

Photodynamic therapy is a therapeutic option to treat cancer and other diseases. PDT is used every day in dermatology, and recent developments in the treatment of glioblastoma, mesothelioma or prostate have demonstrated the efficacy of this modality. In order to improve the efficacy of PDT, different strategies are under development, such as the use of targeted PS or nanoparticles to improve selectivity and the design of light devices to better monitor the light dose. Due to the low penetration of light into tissue, another way to improve the efficacy of PDT to treat deep tumors is the use of upconversion NPs or bi-photon absorption compounds. These compounds can be excited in the red part of the spectrum. A relatively new approach, which we will call PDTX, is the use of X-rays instead of UV-visible light for deeper penetration into tissue. The principle of this technique will be described, and the state-of-art literature concerning this modality will be discussed. First, we will focus on various photosensitizers that have been used in combination with X-ray irradiation. To improve the efficacy of this modality, nanoparticles have been designed that allow the conversion of high-energy ionizing radiation into UV-visible light; these are potential candidates for the PDTX approach. They will be discussed at the end of this review.

Inorganic Nanoparticles for Photodynamic Therapy.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a well-established technique employed to treat aged macular degeneration and certain types of cancer, or to kill microbes by using a photoactivatable molecule (a photosensitizer, PS) combined with light of an appropriate wavelength and oxygen. Many PSs are used against cancer but none of them are highly specific. Moreover, most are hydrophobic, so are poorly soluble in aqueous media. To improve both the transportation of the compounds and the selectivity of the treatment, nanoparticles (NPs) have been designed. Thanks to their small size, these can accumulate in a tumor because of the well-known enhanced permeability effect. By changing the composition of the nanoparticles it is also possible to achieve other goals, such as (1) targeting receptors that are over-expressed on tumoral cells or neovessels, (2) making them able to absorb two photons (upconversion or biphoton), and (3) improving singlet oxygen generation by the surface plasmon resonance effect (gold nanoparticles). In this chapter we describe recent developments with inorganic NPs in the PDT domain. Pertinent examples selected from the literature are used to illustrate advances in the field. We do not consider either polymeric nanoparticles or quantum dots, as these are developed in other chapters.

Solvent-controlled regioselective protection of 5'-O-protected thymidine.

This paper describes an efficient procedure for selective 3'-O- or 3-N-protection of 5'-O-tert-butyldimethylsilylthymidine, depending on the use of aprotic polar solvents with low or high dielectric constant, respectively. These syntheses were activated by either ultrasound or microwaves. Several alkyl bromides offer a convenient route to prepare 3'-O- or 3-N-protected and functionalized thymidine derivatives.

[Specific folic-acid targeted photosensitizer. The first step toward intraperitoneal photodynamic therapy for epithelial ovarian cancer]. / Photosensibilisateur spécifique pour la thérapie photodynamique ciblée des métastases péritonéales des cancers ovariens.

OBJECTIVE: Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) management remains association of debulking surgery in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy. Sixty percent of women with EOC considered in remission will develop recurrent disease. An option to improve the completion of cytoreductive surgery may be the use of photodynamic therapy to induce necrosis of peritoneal metastases. A limit of this technique was the toxicity induced by the lack of specificity of old-generation photosensitizer (PS) for tumor tissue if the light could not be specifically applied. To solve this problem, a solution is the design of selective PS. Folate receptor is a promising target for EOC targeted therapy. We present preclinical results concerning properties of a folic-acid targeted photosensitizer. METHOD: Preclinical studies have been performed in vitro on murine and human cell lines of EOC and in vivo with a preclinical model of peritoneal carcinomatosis (Fisher F344 rat/NuTu-19 cell line). They aimed to precise the ability of PS to target specifically tumor tissue, to emit specific fluorescence, and to obtain cell death. RESULTS: Tissue quantification of the PS showed specific incorporation of the folate-targeted PS within tumor tissue. Specificity for ovarian cancer metastases is better than previously reported with others photosensitizers (tumor-to-normal tissue ratio 9.6). We could detect specific fluorescence in vitro and in vivo on peritoneal metastases. Folic-acid targeted PDT allows to obtain human EOC cells death. CONCLUSION: Specific PS may allow the development of efficient and safe intraperitoneal PDT procedure, which could play a role in the prevention of EOC peritoneal recurrences.