Optimizing photodynamic therapy by liposomal formulation of the photosensitizer pyropheophorbide-a methyl ester: in vitro and ex vivo comparative biophysical investigations in a colon carcinoma cell line.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT), induced by a photosensitizer (PS) encapsulated in a nanostructure, has emerged as an appropriate treatment to cure a multitude of oncological and non-oncological diseases. Pyropheophorbide-a methyl ester (PPME) is a second-generation PS tested in PDT, and is a potential candidate for future clinical applications. The present study, carried out in a human colon carcinoma cell line (HCT-116), evaluates the improvement resulting from a liposomal formulation of PPME versus free-PPME. Absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies, fluorescence lifetime measurements, subcellular imaging and co-localization analysis have been performed in order to analyze the properties of PPME for each delivery mode. The benefit of drug encapsulation in DMPC-liposomes is clear from our experiments, with a 5-fold higher intracellular drug delivery than that observed with free-PPME at similar concentrations. The reactive oxygen species (ROSs) produced after PPME-mediated photosensitization have been identified and quantified by using electron spin resonance spectroscopy. Our results demonstrate that PPME-PDT-mediated ROSs are composed of singlet oxygen and a hydroxyl radical. The small amounts of PPME inside mitochondria, as revealed by fluorescence co-localization analysis, could maybe explain the very low apoptotic cell death measured in HCT-116 cells.