Abstract

Three modes of cancer therapy, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, have been central to modern oncologic therapy. Molecular targeted cancer therapies have been introduced to target specific pathways, while minimizing side effects but have had limited success except in several notable cases. Here, we employ an activatable hydrophilic photosensitizer based on a near infrared (NIR) phthalocyanine dye, IR700, which is covalently conjugated to one of several humanized monoclonal antibodies (MAb) targeting cancer-specific cell-surface molecules. When exposed NIR light, the conjugates visualize cancer cells with low dose of NIR light and induce highly selective cell death in vivo with therapeutic dose of NIR light, a process termed “near infrared photo-immunotherapy” (NIR-PIT) (1). (Fig. 1)

© 2015 Optical Society of America