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Heat shock protein 90-targeted photodynamic therapy enables treatment of subcutaneous and visceral tumors.

Kensuke KanekoTakuya OsadaMichael A MorseWilliam R GwinJoshua D GinzelJoshua C SnyderXiao-Yi YangCong-Xiao LiuMarcio Augusto DinizKhaldon BodoorPhilip F HughesTimothy Aj HaysteadHerbert Kim Lyerly
Published in: Communications biology (2020)
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) ablates malignancies by applying focused near-infrared (nIR) light onto a lesion of interest after systemic administration of a photosensitizer (PS); however, the accumulation of existing PS is not tumor-exclusive. We developed a tumor-localizing strategy for PDT, exploiting the high expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in cancer cells to retain high concentrations of PS by tethering a small molecule Hsp90 inhibitor to a PS (verteporfin, VP) to create an Hsp90-targeted PS (HS201). HS201 accumulates to a greater extent than VP in breast cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo, resulting in increased treatment efficacy of HS201-PDT in various human breast cancer xenografts regardless of molecular and clinical subtypes. The therapeutic index achieved with Hsp90-targeted PDT would permit treatment not only of localized tumors, but also more diffusely infiltrating processes such as inflammatory breast cancer.
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