Abstract
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been adopted as a minimally invasive approach for the localized treatment of superficial tumors, representing an improvement in the care of cancer patients. To improve the efficacy of PDT, it is important to first select an optimized nanocarrier and determine the influence of light parameters on the photosensitizing agent. In particular, much more knowledge concerning the importance of fluence and exposure time is required to gain a better understanding of the photodynamic efficacy. In the present study, we synthesized novel folic acid-(FA) and hematoporphyrin (HP)-conjugated multifunctional magnetic nanoparticles (CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs), which were characterized as effective anticancer reagents for PDT, and evaluated the influence of incubation time and light exposure time on the photodynamic anticancer activities of CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs in prostate cancer cells (PC-3 cells). The results indicated that the same fluence at different exposure times resulted in changes in the anticancer activities on PC-3 cells as well as in reactive oxygen species formation. In addition, an increase of the fluence showed an improvement for cell photo-inactivation. Therefore, we have established optimized conditions for new multifunctional magnetic nanoparticles with direct application for improving PDT for cancer patients.
Highlights
Over the last few decades, photosensitizer (PS)-mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been introduced as a possible alternative non-invasive localized therapeutic modality for treating cancer as well as cardiovascular, ophthalmic, dermatological, and dental diseases [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
These results suggested that an increased incubation time—i.e., 2 and 4 h—resulted in significantly better photo-killing efficacy of CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs in PC-3 cells compared with a 1-h incubation time
To evaluate the intracellular localization of CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs in prostate cancer cells, PC-3 cells treated with CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs (6.25 μg/mL) for 1, 2, and 4 h were washed with phosphate-buffer saline (PBS) three times and fixed with 2.5% glutaraldehyde and 4% formaldehyde for 4 h at 4 ◦C
Summary
Over the last few decades, photosensitizer (PS)-mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been introduced as a possible alternative non-invasive localized therapeutic modality for treating cancer as well as cardiovascular, ophthalmic, dermatological, and dental diseases [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The number of viable cells significantly decreased at 2 and 4 h incubation with increasing doses of the CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs, from 100, 33.6, 9.3, 3.4, and 0.4% for 2 h and from 100, 34.6, 9.6, 8.9, and 5.8% for 4 h compared to control levels. These results suggested that an increased incubation time—i.e., 2 and 4 h—resulted in significantly better photo‐killing efficacy of CoFe2O4‐HPs‐FAs in PC‐3 cells compared with a 1‐h incubation time. The cells irradiated with LED light after treatment of the CoFe2O4-HPs-FAs for 2 h were quickly condensed and some showed a granular nucleus body, which was not detected in the control cells These results are consistent with the results of photodynamic anticancer efficacy shown in Figure 5c,d, further indicating that the photodynamic anticancer effects may be induced via apoptosis
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