Biomedical applications cancer patients

Photodynamic therapy is well tolerated with minimal accumulative toxicity in patients as compared to chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It is minimally invasive and highly specific and does not cause scarring after the treatment. However, clinical application of photodynamic therapy is still limited to treat superficial lesions because it requires accurate light irradiation. Another challenge for effective photodynamic therapy is the specific delivery of the photosensitizer into cancer cells. Current photosensitizers do not have good specificity to cancer cells. Recent development in drug delivery and biomedical imaging allows efficient delivery of photosensitizers into tumor tissues and accurate location of non-superficial lesions for effective photodynamic therapy. 

---