Investigating the photosensitization activities of flavins irradiated by blue LEDs

Due to their ability to easily absorb light and to generate highly reactive species, photosensitizers emerged as promising tools in a wide variety of physico-chemical and biological processes. Natural photosensitizers have the benefit of a life-compatible toxicological profile. Porphyrins and flavins are such examples that already proved their efficiency as photo-dynamic therapeutics. The present article describes a reliable, easy-to-implement, readily available and reproducible method that can be used to characterize the photosensitizing activity of flavins. Several key factors were investigated during this study, the optimum parameters were: (i) a blue LED light source (λ _em = 455 nm) at 6.69 mW; (ii) a pH of 6 mimicking the tumoral environment; (iii) an air-saturated atmosphere reaction medium, (iv) a tetrazolium dye (MTT) was used to monitor the photosensitization efficacy via the generation of the colored MTT-formazan product. This method can be used to rank a series of flavins based on their photosensitizing activities. Such structure-photosensitization activity relationships are essential for the discovery of future potent photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy.