Nature Communications (Apr 2021)

Photoactivatable metabolic warheads enable precise and safe ablation of target cells in vivo

  • Sam Benson,
  • Fabio de Moliner,
  • Antonio Fernandez,
  • Erkin Kuru,
  • Nicholas L. Asiimwe,
  • Jun-Seok Lee,
  • Lloyd Hamilton,
  • Dirk Sieger,
  • Isabel R. Bravo,
  • Abigail M. Elliot,
  • Yi Feng,
  • Marc Vendrell

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22578-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Metabolites can distinguish pathogenic from healthy cells, but they are hard to couple to current photosensitizers without altering their biological activity. Here the authors design a new family of photosensitizers that retain metabolite function to target pathogenic cells and ablate them by photodynamic therapy.