SUMMARY
Phototherapy is a powerful noninvasive treatment approach for cancer treatment, with several agents currently being in clinical use. Despite the progress and promise, most current phototherapy agents have serious side effects as they can lead to damage to healthy tissue, even when the photosensitizers is fused to targeting molecules, due to non-specific light activation of the unbound photosensitizer. To overcome these limitations, we develop a phototherapy agent that combines a functional ligand and a near infrared phthalocyanine dye. The target we focus on here is type 2 cannabinoid receptor (CB2R) which has been considered an attractive therapeutic target for phototherapy given it is over-expressed by many types of cancers which are located at a surface or can be reached by an endoscope. We show that our CB2R-targeted phototherapy agent, IR700DX-mbc94, is specific for CB2R and effective only when bound to the target receptor, suggesting a receptor-selective phototherapy mechanism and eliminating key side effects. Overall, this opens up opportunity for development of an alternative treatment option for CB2R positive cancers.
Portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) is very common and it plays a major role in the prognosis and clinical staging of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We have published the first version of the Guideline in 2016 and revised in 2018. Over the past several years, many new evidences for the treatment of PVTT become available especially for the advent of new targeted drugs and immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICIs) which have further improved the prognosis of PVTT. So, the Chinese Association of Liver Cancer (CALC) and Chinese Medical Doctor Association(CMDA) revised the 2018 version of guideline to adapt to the development of PVTT treatment. Future treatment strategies for HCC with PVTT in China would depend on new evidences from more future clinical trials.
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