Recovery of Chinese hamster cells following photosensitization by zinc tetrahydroxyphthalocyanine.

The phthalocyanine dyes are attractive sensitizers for photodynamic therapy of cancer. The light fluence response curves for photocytotoxicity of zinc tetrahydroxyphthalocyanine were constructed using the colony-forming ability of Chinese hamster cells as an end-point. The survival curve of cells photosensitized to white light by this dye has a pronounced shoulder followed by an exponential decline. Postillumination hypertonic treatment (0.5 M NaCl for 20 min at 37 degrees C) enhanced log-phase killing, although to a lesser extent than after exposure to ionizing radiation. While such an enhancement usually indicates that the cells are able to repair potentially lethal damage, delayed trypsinization of photosensitized cells in plateau-phase failed to show a significant increase in cell survival. Thus, the repair of such a damage in plateau-phase is apparently absent. Experiments with split light fluence indicated that log-phase cells can repair sublethal damage during a 24 h interval, as evidenced by the reappearance of the shoulder on the split-dose survival curve.