Light-activated drug delivery

Volodkin DV, Madaboosi N, Blacklock 1 et al (2009) Surface-supported multilayers decorated with bio-active material aimed at light-triggered drug delivery. Langmuir 25 14037-14043... 

Ultimately, for Pt(IV) anticancer drugs, a combination of incorporation of bioactive ligands that specifically target cancer cells, control over ligand-exchange kinetics, and selective activation by light would allow for temporal and spatial control of drug delivery and activation. 

PCI has been shown to increase the biological activity of a large variety of macromolecules and other molecules that do not readily penetrate the plasma membrane (Table 1). PCI has also been shown to enhance the treatment effect of targeted therapeutic macromolecules. These results show that PCI can induce efficient light-directed delivery of macromolecules into the cytosol, indicating that PCI may have a variety of useful applications for site-specific drug delivery, e.g., in gene therapy, vaccination, and cancer treatment. PCI of BLM has recently been approved for a clinical Phase I trial, where several indications have been included. The first patients with head and neck cancer have recently been treated at... 

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