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Photodynamic Therapy

Two photons are better than one

Nature Photonics volume 2, pages 394–395 (2008)Cite this article

Over the past 20 years photodynamic therapy, a cell-killing technique where a photosensitizing drug is activated by carefully targeted visible light, has led to new therapies for cancer and other diseases. In doing so it has won support from scientists, clinicians and patients alike.

First used in extensive clinical trials in the 1980s (ref. 1), photodynamic therapy (PDT) has now been used with many tens of thousands of patients, notably with applications in several branches of oncology2, ophthalmology3 and dermatology4. However, there is general recognition that it has not yet reached its full potential, partly owing to problems with the drugs used at present and partly because even higher selectivity for targeting the drugs is required.

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Figure 1: Photodynamic therapy in practice.
Figure 2: This chronic leg ulcer had existed for 18 months and healed completely within 2 months of PDT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanley Brown is at the Centre for Photobiology and Photodynamic Therapy in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. s.b.brown@leeds.ac.uk,

    Stanley Brown

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  1. Stanley Brown
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Competing interests

Stanley Brown is employed by Photopharmica, a small company developing photodynamic therapy for infection. The company has no current or planned interests in two-photon photodynamic therapy.

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Brown, S. Two photons are better than one. Nature Photon 2, 394–395 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.112

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.112

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