<title>Photodynamic therapy by nonresonant two-photon excitation</title>

Abstract

Intracellular photodynamic reactions by nonlinear excitation of porphyrin photosensitizers have been induced using near infrared ultrashort laser pulses at 200 fs pulse width, 80 MHz pulse repetition rate and 2 mW mean laser power. In particular, a highly focused 780 nm pulsed laser scanning beam was employed at a frame rate of 1/16 s-1 (60 microsecond(s) pixel dwell time) to expose Photofrin-labeled and aminolevulinic acid (ALA)-labeled Chinese hamster ovary cells. Intracellular accumulation and photobleaching of the fluorescent photosensitizers protoporphyrin IX and Photofrin have been studied by non-resonant two-photon fluorescence excitation. Subsequent scanning of the sensitizer-labeled cells resulted in reduced cloning efficiency of 50% and 0% after about 13 scans (approximately equals 10 mJ) and 50 scans, respectively, in the case of Photofrin accumulation (5 (mu) g/ml) and after about 24 scans and 100 scans in the case of ALA administration (1.5 mg/ml). Live/dead assays revealed the loss of vitality of most of cells after 50 scans for Photofrin-labeled cells and 100 scans for ALA-labeled cells. Sensitizer-free control cells could be scanned more than 250 times (1.1 h) without impact on the reproduction behavior, morphology, and vitality.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.