New strategies to enhance photodynamic therapy for solid tumors

Photodynamic therapy for cancer uses laser light to specifically activate anti-cancer drugs at the tumor site. However, this potentially effective and patient-friendly therapy has seen limited clinical application due to the inability of these drugs to accumulate at the tumor site and the subsequent survival of the malignancy. The aim of this research was to find out how tumor cells survive this therapy, to develop drug delivery systems that target the anti-cancer drugs towards the tumor site and to use this knowledge to design new nanotechnological approaches that enable a combination treatment of PDT and chemotherapy.