[Photodynamic therapy in the treatment of breast cancer]

Breast cancer is the most common women's cancer in the world. The effective therapies that would not only reduce the high mortality rate associated with the disease, but also improve the quality of life patients with breast cancer are still searching for. PDT is one of the alternative method of cancers treatment, such as bladder, esophagus, respiratory tract and gynaecological cancers. PDT permit to eliminate selected cells from organism with photosensitizers and light use. Obtained results depend on both properties of cells as well as properties and localization of photosensitizer and illumination condition. In recent years possibilities of PDT using in breast cancer treatment are analyzed. These researches are focused mainly on the efficacy's assessing of different photosensitizers used in photodynamic therapy in vitro of different breast cancer cell lines, including also cells derived from metastatic lesions. The viability and proliferative activity of these cells, expression of selected proapoptotic genes, release of cytochrome c by mitochondria into the cytoplasm, the activity of caspases are analyzed. The first results of clinical trials were also described.