Prostate cancer is a very common disease, which is, unfortunately, often the cause of many male deaths. This is underlined by the fact that the early stages of prostate cancer are often asymptomatic. Therefore, the disease is usually detected and diagnosed at late advanced or even metastasized stages, which are already difficult to treat. Hence, it is important to pursue research and development not only in terms of novel diagnostic methods but also of therapeutic ones, as well as to increase the effectiveness of the treatment by combinational medicinal approach. Therefore, in this review article, we focus on recent approaches and novel potential tools for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer; these include not only androgen deprivation therapy, antiandrogen therapy, photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy, immunotherapy, multimodal therapy, but also poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase, Akt and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors.

• Keywords
• advanced prostate cancer treatment, androgen deprivation therapy, antiandrogen therapy, cancer diagnostics, immunotherapy, multimodal therapy, photodynamic therapy, phototherapy, specific drug targeting,
• MeSH
• Phototherapy MeSH
• Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal chemistry   pharmacology   therapeutic use   MeSH
• Immunotherapy MeSH
• Clinical Trials as Topic MeSH
• Combined Modality Therapy MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Prostatic Neoplasms drug therapy   immunology   therapy   MeSH
• Animals MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Male MeSH
• Animals MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Review MeSH
• Names of Substances
• Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal MeSH

Purpurin 18 derivatives with a polyethylene glycol (PEG) linker were synthesized as novel photosensitizers (PSs) with the goal of using them in photodynamic therapy (PDT) for cancer. These compounds, derived from a second-generation PS, exhibit absorption at long wavelengths; considerable singlet oxygen generation and, in contrast to purpurin 18, have higher hydrophilicity due to decreased logP. Together, these properties make them potentially ideal PSs. To verify this, we screened the developed compounds for cell uptake, intracellular localization, antitumor activity and induced cell death type. All of the tested compounds were taken up into cancer cells of various origin and localized in organelles known to be important PDT targets, specifically, mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum. The incorporation of a zinc ion and PEGylation significantly enhanced the photosensitizing efficacy, decreasing IC50 (half maximal inhibitory compound concentration) in HeLa cells by up to 170 times compared with the parental purpurin 18. At effective PDT concentrations, the predominant type of induced cell death was apoptosis. Overall, our results show that the PEGylated derivatives presented have significant potential as novel PSs with substantially augmented phototoxicity for application in the PDT of cervical, prostate, pancreatic and breast cancer.

• Keywords
• PEGylated purpurin 18, apoptosis, cancer cells, cytotoxicity, flow cytometry, live-cell fluorescence microscopy, photodynamic therapy, photosensitizer, phototoxicity, singlet oxygen,
• MeSH
• Microscopy, Fluorescence MeSH
• Photochemotherapy methods   MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Cell Line, Tumor MeSH
• Porphyrins chemistry   MeSH
• Flow Cytometry MeSH
• Solubility MeSH
• Singlet Oxygen chemistry   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Names of Substances
• Porphyrins MeSH
• purpurin 18 MeSH Browser
• Singlet Oxygen MeSH