Institute of
bioorganic chemistry

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) as a cancer treatment modality is currently attracting increasing attention. However, PDT is also characterized by undesirable effects of sunlight on healthy tissues. Employees of the IBCH RAS have obtained a hybrid protein-peptide construct for selective binding and subsequent photodynamic ablation of cancer cells. A peptide fragment was used as a targeting module, which pH-dependently binds to the cancer cell. A mutant of miniSOG protein covalently linked to the peptide was used as a photosensitising component. It was shown that such a protein-peptide construct selectively binds to HeLa cells at pH below 6.8 and destroys them upon exposure to light. The results demonstrate the possibility of using such complexes for targeted delivery to cancer cells and subsequent high-precision PDT. The work is published in the journal J. Photochem. Photobiol. B: Biol.