Cancer Photo Therapies that Target Mitochondria

Drug delivery system (DDS) technology is essential for establishing an effective form of photo therapy, which would allow the required dose of a therapeutic molecule of choice to act where it is needed and for the required time. Cancer photo therapy typically involves photochemical reactions induced by light irradiation to cause cell death. Over the past few decades, mitochondria have attracted considerable attention in the field of therapy. The fact that mitochondria are the site where reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced suggests that targeting this organelle could improve photodynamic therapy (PDT) efficacy for both normally oxygenated and hypoxic cancers. In addition, because, among the various cellular organelles, mitochondria are particularly sensitive to an increase in temperature a photothermal therapy (PTT) strategy for targeting mitochondria is often used in cancer photo therapy. In this chapter, we provide an overview of mitochondria-targeted PDT and PTT. We also summarize our current efforts for achieving mitochondrial photo therapy against cancer using liposomes (a MITO-Porter) that target mitochondria.