Physical Sciences Inc., 20 New England Business Center, Andover, Massachusetts 01810, United States.
Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Dermatology, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44195, United States.
J Phys Chem B. 2023 Mar 23;127(11):2289-2301. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c07330. Epub 2023 Mar 9.
Translation of experimental techniques from one scientific discipline to another is often difficult but rewarding. Knowledge gained from the new area can lead to long lasting and fruitful collaborations with concomitant development of new ideas and studies. In this Review Article, we describe how early work on the chemically pumped atomic iodine laser (COIL) led to the development of a key diagnostic for a promising cancer treatment known as photodynamic therapy (PDT). The highly metastable excited state of molecular oxygen, aΔ, also known as singlet oxygen, is the link between these disparate fields. It powers the COIL laser and is the active species that kills cancer cells during PDT. We describe the fundamentals of both COIL and PDT and trace the development path of an ultrasensitive dosimeter for singlet oxygen. The path from COIL lasers to cancer research was relatively long and required medical and engineering expertise from numerous collaborations. As we show below, the knowledge gained in the COIL research, combined with these extensive collaborations, has resulted in our being able to show a strong correlation between cancer cell death and the singlet oxygen measured during PDT treatments of mice. This progress is a key step in the eventual development of a singlet oxygen dosimeter that could be used to guide PDT treatments and improve outcomes.
将实验技术从一个科学学科翻译到另一个科学学科通常是困难的，但也是有回报的。从新领域获得的知识可以导致与新思想和研究的长期而富有成效的合作。在这篇综述文章中，我们描述了化学泵浦原子碘激光器（COIL）的早期工作如何导致一种用于有前途的癌症治疗方法——光动力疗法（PDT）的关键诊断方法的发展。高度亚稳态的分子氧激发态，aΔ，也称为单线态氧，是这两个不同领域之间的联系。它为 COIL 激光提供动力，也是 PDT 过程中杀死癌细胞的活性物质。我们描述了 COIL 和 PDT 的基本原理，并追溯了单线态氧超灵敏剂量计的发展路径。从 COIL 激光器到癌症研究的路径相对较长，需要来自众多合作的医学和工程专业知识。正如我们下面所示，在 COIL 研究中获得的知识，结合这些广泛的合作，使我们能够表明在 PDT 治疗小鼠期间测量的单线态氧与癌细胞死亡之间存在很强的相关性。这一进展是最终开发能够指导 PDT 治疗并改善结果的单线态氧剂量计的关键一步。
