Philippe Maillard

Two‐Photon Excitation of Porphyrin‐Functionalized Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for Photodynamic Therapy

Porous silicon nanoparticles (pSiNPs) act as a sensitizer for the 2-photon excitation of a pendant porphyrin using NIR laser light, for imaging and photodynamic therapy. Mannose-functionalized pSiNPs can be vectorized to MCF-7 human breast cancer cells through a mannose receptor-mediated endocytosis mechanism to provide a 3-fold enhancement of the 2-photon PDT effect.

Assessment of the relevance of supported planar bilayers for modeling specific interactions between glycodendrimeric porphyrins and retinoblastoma cells

Glycodendrimeric porphyrins seem promising photosensitizers usable in photodynamic therapy. Evidence of their ability to interact with an artificial supported bilayer membrane exhibiting a model sugar receptor has been previously shown. In the present work, the interaction of the glycodendrimeric porphyrins with retinoblastoma cells bearing the actual sugar receptor has been assessed by both classical cell cultures and an original approach using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM-D). Our results showed that unlike cell cultures, QCM-D allowed analyzing the mechanism of interaction of the glycodendrimeric porphyrins with the sugar receptor. Not only was molecular recognition demonstrated, but our methodology also proved efficient to discriminate between the studied compounds, depending on the presence of carbohydrate, and the spacer length.