Photodynamic Therapy Excited by Cerenkov Radiation from Cesium-137 Irradiator: In Vitro Studies

Author Info

Yiping Guo Shi Sheng Michael C. Lun Shih-Ming Tsai Wei-Chun Chin Roy Hoglund Changqing Li

Corresponding Author

Changqing Li
Quantitative and Systems Biology Graduate Program, School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced, California, USA

A B S T R A C T

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a non-invasive cancer therapy method that has been clinically approved for many years. Due to strong optical scattering and absorption of tissues, optical photons can only penetrate tissues several millimetres, which limits the applications of PDT to superficial lesions. To overcome the limitation of penetration depth, here we applied Cerenkov radiation, as generated by the high-energy -rays from radionuclide Cesium-137, to directly activate the porphyrin-based photosensitizer MPPa (Pyropheophorbide-a methyl ester) without any additional energy mediators. Experiments were conducted with A549 human lung carcinoma cell line. Moreover, to reduce the effects of possible plastic scintillation on PDT, we used black cell culture plates in these studies. We have also shown that the effects of the scintillations on PDT could be minimized. In our studies, we have excluded the effects of radiotherapy and drug toxicity. Our results indicated that the Cerenkov radiation generated from high energy -rays could be used to activate the photosensitizer MPPa in PDT, which could potentially overcome the penetration limitations of optical photon-based PDT, making the PDT a feasible and complementary cancer therapy for deep lesions.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Sat 16, May 2020
Accepted: Wed 03, Jun 2020
Published: Mon 15, Jun 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Changqing Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.COR.2020.06.07