Development of Novel Photosensitizers for Highly Tumor-selective Photodynamic Therapy and Diagnosis

Abstract

Improving cancer selectivity of photosensitizers is an important issue in developing photodynamic therapy and diagnosis, and an extensive investigation on activatable photosensitizers, as a solution to improve cancer selectivity, have been carried out. The results revealed that the quantum yield of conventional activatable photosensitizers could be controlled by varying the quenching efficiency of the excited state. However, researches on photosensitizers that can control light absorption efficiency have attracted much attention recently. This review presents an overview on the recent activatable photosensitizers.