Destroy cancer cells with light … KIST, develops anti-cancer drug in optical medicine

Light therapy, which illuminates the patient. [중앙포토]

A national research team developed a photomedicine chemotherapy drug that kills cancer cells with light.

On the 10th of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Kim Se-hoon, director of the Teragnosis Research Center, announced that he had succeeded in developing a phototherapy agent directed against cancer through joint research with Professor from the Seoul National University, Yun-shik Lee, and the Korean University professor, Andong-jun An. The treatment developed is characterized by injecting a photosensitizer once and performing phototherapy repeatedly for a long time.

Phototherapy technology is a technology that injects a laser-responsive photosensitive agent into the body by injection, accumulates it in cancer tissue, and then shoots light to kill cancer cells. However, existing photosensitizers can only be used once, so they had to be re-administered each time they were treated. Furthermore, photosensitizers accumulated in the patient’s body for a certain period of time even after phototherapy was completed, causing side effects when the patient was exposed to sunlight or light such as indoor lighting. Because of this, the patient had to undergo an injection every time he received phototherapy and was quarantined in the dark for a certain period of time.

A national research team has developed a treatment that can repeat phototherapy for 2 to 4 weeks by administering a photosensitizer once. The researchers confirmed the efficacy of the photosensitizers through experiments in mice. [KIST 제공]

To solve this problem, the center’s director’s research team, Se-hoon Kim, developed a peptide-based photosensitizer that activates the effects of phototherapy only on cancerous tissues. As a result of injecting the developed photosensitizer into experimental mice, it was continuously released around the tumor for 2 to 4 weeks with a single injection. It was also confirmed that when phototherapy was repeated, only cancer cells were killed without destroying normal cells.

“The developed phototherapy agent can be repeated over a long period of time by injecting a single injection around the cancer, and normal cells are not destroyed and only cancer cells can be completely killed.” “It will be useful in the treatment of optical medicine in the future.”

This research was carried out as a large KIST project with the support of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Information. The research results were published in the latest issue of ‘ACS Nano’, an international nanotechnology journal.

Reporter Park Hyung-soo [email protected]