| Carbohydrate conjugated porphyrins are of great interests in the application of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) for cancer treatment, as they have good solubility and bear cell recognition groups. A thorough review on this topic is presented. A tetra-glucose derivative (P-Glu4) of TPPF20 is a more potent drug over the tetra-galactose derivative (P-Gal4) in affinity, cell death and apoptotic induction in human breast cancer cells. They also have good selectivity toward cancer cells over normal cells. The latter effects were investigated using rat fibroblasts where the selectivity for the transformed cells is found to be over 3 times that of the normal cells. Synthesis of solution-phase combinatorial porphyrin libraries is accomplished and a whole-cell selection methodology is presented. |
