[New trends and safety of photodynamic therapy]

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is used mainly in tumor diagnosis and treatment. It is obvious that PDT can increase the efficiency of traditional methods such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Unfortunately, photosensitizers used in the treatment are still imperfect. According to severe side effects, patients need to change their life habits even for several weeks. The problem is attributed to insufficient selectivity of dyes toward cancer tissues. Safety of PDT can be improved by application of various carriers including liposomes, nanotubes or nanoparticles. Binding of photosensitizers to tumor specific molecules opens broad new possibilities for PDT.