Claire Moylan, Eoin M. Scanlan and Mathias O. Senge Pages 2238 - 2348 ( 111 )
This review presents an in-depth overview of the modification of porphyrins with bioconjugates and their applications in medicine today. Porphyrin bioconjugates ranging from nucleotides to steroids are under active scrutiny. However, carbohydrates have been at the forefront of such research in recent years and offer significant potential. This is attributed to their own selectivity to lectins on the surface of cancer cells and their influence on the amphiphilicity of the porphyrin macrocycle. These characteristics and the tendency of porphyrin photosensitizers to accumulate in tumor tissues make glycoporphyrins promising candidates for use as photosensitizers. Thus, a detailed overview of the synthesis and biological evaluation of glycoporphyrins is given with a particular focus on their applications in photodynamic therapy and their future prospects as drug candidates have been reported.
Carbohydrates, glycoporphyrins, photodynamic therapy, porphyrins, sugars, tetrapyrroles.
, , School of Chemistry, SFI Tetrapyrrole Laboratory, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, 152-160 Pearse Street, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.