Clinical and pre-clinical advances in the PDT/PTT strategy for diagnosis and treatment of cancer

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) have demonstrated great potential to diagnose and combat localized cancers. As a matter of fact, these techniques are less invasive and have fewer side effects than traditional cancer treatments like surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. This review summarizes the clinical progress in the theranostics (diagnosis and treatment) of various types of regional cancers using these two light stimuli techniques, PDT and PTT. Therefore, clinical advances in cancer diagnosis based on PDT are detailed, including fluorescence-guided PDT for intraoperative cancer detection, optical coherence tomography (OCT)-guided PDT for early cancer detection, and imaging by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) assisted through PDT/PTT. Moreover, clinical studies of breast, prostate, skin, gynecologic, head, neck and other varieties of cancer have been addressed to compare the main conditions of these treatments. This work also discussed the principal advantages and drawbacks of PDT and PTT in tumor targeting and cancer therapy. Finally, the usage of nanoparticles as photosensitizers (PSs) and photothermal agents (PAs) have been analyzed. In this manner, the authors have compiled relevant updated studies so that researchers interested in these areas can access it speedily.