Designing Synthetic Glycosylated Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy

In recent years, photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been approved for treating various medical conditions, including pre-cancer and cancer. PDT is a treatment that employs particular drugs, called ‘photosensitizers (PS)' which work along with the specific light source and local oxygen in the treated area. The significant benefits of PDT are minimally invasive procedures while delivering high accuracy in targeting areas. In the past two decades, cancer researchers have conducted remarkable studies developing photosensitizers that have enhanced our understanding in the fields of cancer biology and its genetics. However, several limitations of PDT have been noticed, such as skin photosensitivity and inefficient PDT efficacy under hypoxia conditions. Besides this, the stability and solubility of photosensitizer in aqueous solution is another crucial factor for efficient PDT activity. The glycosylation of photosensitizers would be a potential strategy to overcome the limitations of PDT described above. Thus, this mini-review is focused primarily on the molecular design and biological applications of glycosylated photosensitizers, which can provide new ways of designing them.