Electron spin resonance spectroscopy (ESR) of the nitroxide labelled fatty acid probes (5-, 16-doxyl stearic acid) was used to monitor the micelle microviscosity of three surfactants at various concentrations in aqueous solution: sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). At low surfactant concentration, there is no micelle, the ESR probe is dissolved in water/surfactant homogeneous phase and gives his microviscosity. At higher surfactant concentration, an abrupt increase in microviscosity indicates the apparition of micelles and, the solubilization of the probes in micelles. The microviscosity of the three surfactants, in a large surfactant range, was obtained as well as the critical micelle concentration (CMC). The microviscosity increased slightly with the increase in surfactant concentration. Phosphate buffer lowered the CMC value and generally increased the microviscosity.
Photodynamic therapy (PDT), induced by a photosensitizer (PS) encapsulated in a nanostructure, has emerged as an appropriate treatment to cure a multitude of oncological and non-oncological diseases. Pyropheophorbide-a methyl ester (PPME) is a second-generation PS tested in PDT, and is a potential candidate for future clinical applications. The present study, carried out in a human colon carcinoma cell line (HCT-116), evaluates the improvement resulting from a liposomal formulation of PPME versus free-PPME. Absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies, fluorescence lifetime measurements, subcellular imaging and co-localization analysis have been performed in order to analyze the properties of PPME for each delivery mode. The benefit of drug encapsulation in DMPC-liposomes is clear from our experiments, with a 5-fold higher intracellular drug delivery than that observed with free-PPME at similar concentrations. The reactive oxygen species (ROSs) produced after PPME-mediated photosensitization have been identified and quantified by using electron spin resonance spectroscopy. Our results demonstrate that PPME-PDT-mediated ROSs are composed of singlet oxygen and a hydroxyl radical. The small amounts of PPME inside mitochondria, as revealed by fluorescence colocalization analysis, could maybe explain the very low apoptotic cell death measured in HCT-116 cells.
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