Porphyrinoid biohybrid materials as an emerging toolbox for biomedical light management

Abstract

The development of photoactive and biocompatible nanomaterials is a current major challenge of materials science and nanotechnology, as they will contribute to promoting current and future biomedical applications. A growing strategy in this direction consists of using biologically inspired hybrid materials to maintain or even enhance the optical properties of chromophores and fluorophores in biological media. Within this area, porphyrinoids constitute the most important family of organic photosensitizers. The following extensive review will cover their incorporation into different kinds of photosensitizing biohybrid materials, as a fundamental research effort toward the management of light for biomedical use, including technologies such as photochemical internalization (PCI), photoimmunotherapy (PIT), and theranostic combinations of fluorescence imaging and photodynamic therapy (PDT) or photodynamic inactivation (PDI) of microorganismsThe work carried out to write this review article has received funding from the People Program (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program FP7-PEOPLE-2012-ITN under REA grant agreement no. GA 316975. This work was supported by the EU (CosmoPHOS-nano, FP7-NMP-2012-6, 310337-2), Spanish MINECO (CTQ2017-85393-P (TT), CTQ-2014-53673-P and CTQ-2017-89539-P (AdlE), PCIN-2017-042/EuroNanoMed2017-191, TEMPEAT (TT)), and the Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid (FOTOCARBON, S2013/MIT-2841). IMDEA Nanociencia acknowledges support from the ‘Severo Ochoa’ Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (MINECO, Grant SEV-2016-0686