Photosensitizers and Reactive Oxygen Species for Cancer and Antimicrobial Therapy
This community designs and synthesizes light-activated molecules that generate reactive oxygen species to destroy cancer cells and bacteria.
The work centers on the synthesis of photosensitizers, particularly zinc phthalocyanines, boron-dipyrromethenes (BODIPYs), and corroles, which are engineered to produce singlet oxygen or other reactive oxygen species upon light exposure. These agents are applied in photodynamic therapy for various cancers, including breast cancer and squamous cell carcinoma, as well as in antimicrobial photodynamic therapy against pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus. The research also explores the use of 5-aminolevulinic acid and methylene blue, alongside advanced concepts like aggregation-induced emission and oxygen-independent radical generation to enhance therapeutic efficacy in targeted treatments.
The community is most heavily represented in oxygen research, accounting for 1.5% of all tracked oxygen papers, and boron research, where it constitutes 0.9% of the total. It also holds a 0.4% share of zinc and iodine research.
The community comprises 22,775 papers, with the highest publication volumes in Photodiagnosis and Photodynamic Therapy, Photochemistry and Photobiology, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Recent work focuses on machine learning-accelerated discovery of corrole photosensitizers for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, oxygen-independent copper-based agents for immunotherapy, and boron-stereogenic BODIPY libraries for near-infrared bioimaging.