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Publication
Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) is produced in the mitochondria and used as fluorescent contrast agent or photosensitizer after exogenous 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) delivery in cancer photodynamic detection and therapy (PDT). Although routinely used in the clinics, the stimulated production of PpIX is often insufficient and/or heterogeneous within the lesions, thereby limiting the PDT performances. Since photobiomodulation, which is based on the illumination of the tissues with sub-thermal radiometric conditions in the red or near-infrared, is known to stimulate the cell metabolism, we have optimized these conditions in vitro. Some of them lead to the homogenization and strong stimulation of the PpIX endogenous production. Interestingly, combined sequentially, PBM enhanced significantly the potency of PpIX-based PDT in vitro and in vivo in tumors grown on the chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane. These results are in excellent agreement with other assays based on measurements of the cell survival/death, the production of reactive oxygen species, including singlet oxygen, and the mitochondrial membrane potential.
Johan Auwerx, Mario Romani, Elena Katsyuba, Dina Hofer
The organisation of molecules into dynamic cells, and collaboration of many of those cells over a billion years led to the evolution of human life. During the last century, biologists then began to unravel the marvels of cellular organisation with ever in ...