Overcome the limitation of hypoxia against photodynamic therapy to treat cancer cells by using perfluorocarbon nanodroplet for photosensitizer delivery

•Development of a safe, nano-scaled and perfluorocarbon based photosensitizer delivery system.•Demonstration of photosensitizer achieve significant photodynamic efficacy when treating hypoxic tumor.•The problem of hypoxia can be overcome just by using a suitable drug delivery system.

The low oxygen concentration limits the therapeutic efficacy of photodynamic therapy in treating cancer cells in hypoxia, since the cytotoxic 1O2 can't be effectively generated in this condition. To overcome this, we load photosensitizer into perfluorocarbon nanodroplet, which has a high oxygen capacity to enrich O2 for photodynamic consumption. Under the well-controlled hypoxic condition, we test its efficacy both in vitro and in vivo. This method can be successfully used for destroying cancer cells in hypoxic condition.

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