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Professor Peter Sadler, Chairman of the Chemistry Department of the
University of Warwick, who led the research project said:
"Light activation provides its massive toxic power and also allows
treatment to be targeted much more accurately against cancer cells."
The compound could be used in particular to treat surface cancers.
Patients could be treated in a darkened environment with light
directed specifically at cancer cells containing the compound
activating the compound�s toxicity and killing those cells. Normal
cells exposed to the compound would be protected by keeping the
patient in darkness until the compound has passed through and out of
the patient.
The new light activated Pt(IV)
complex is also more efficient in its toxic action on cancer cells in
that, unlike other compounds currently used in photodynamic therapy,
it does not require the presence of significant amounts of oxygen
within a cancer cell to become toxic. Cancer cells tend to have less
oxygen present than normal cells.
Although this work is in its early stages, the researches are hopeful
that, in a few years time, the new platinum compound could be used in
a new type of photoactivated chemotherapy for cancer.
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