Light-Responsive Probes: Guiding Clinician Decision-Making and Destroying Cancer

The standard care of cancer therapy is highly dependent on the cancer type, stage and patients. Consequently, for most cancers there is only marginal improvements in patient survival rates. Undetected/unremoved cancer during surgery or resistance to chemotherapy are major causes for a poor prognosis. To tackle these issues, research in my lab focuses on (i) the development of fluorescent chemosensors to predict anticancer drug resistance for personalized medicine, and (ii) the development of novel photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy; some properties include: enhanced cancer cell selectivity, biomolecular targeting (enzymes, DNA), and the generation of reactive oxygen species without light excitation.