Medicine & Health
Light-activated cancer therapy with phthalocyanines
The problem
Chemotherapy attacks the whole body to reach the tumour, and the side effects are the price of that imprecision.
The innovation
Phthalocyanine dyes that accumulate in tumour tissue and are inert until illuminated at a specific wavelength, at which point they generate reactive oxygen that kills the cell.
How it worked
Nyokong's group tunes the dye's metal centre and attaches it to nanoparticles to control where it goes and how efficiently it converts light into cytotoxic oxygen.
Why it mattered
A treatment route whose damage is bounded by where the light is pointed, developed and published from an African university laboratory.
The legacy
Photodynamic therapy is in clinical use for several cancers; this work has also been extended to water treatment and antimicrobial applications.
Sources
L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science laureate citation, 2009
Institutional recordPhotodynamic therapy and nanotechnology research publications
Institutional record
Follow the invention
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