Chemical basis of the photosensitizing activity of angelicins.

Angelicins are a group of compounds that show marked photobiologic activity on various substrates; some of them have been proposed as potential agents for the photochemotherapy of skin diseases. A good correlation exists between the photosensitizing activity of these compounds and their capacity to induce monofunctional lesions to DNA; therefore, we believe the chemical nature of these photolesions, we isolated from the products of hydrolysis of the photocombinations between 5 angelicins (angelicin, 4-methyl, 5-methyl, 5'-methyl, and 5,5'-dimethylangelicin) and DNA, the corresponding new fluorescent monoadducts between the 4',5'-double bond of the furocoumarins and the 5,6-double bond of thymine.