A review on ferroptosis and photodynamic therapy synergism: Enhancing anticancer treatment

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent programmed cell death modality, which has showed great potential in anticancer treatment. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is widely used in clinic as an anticancer therapy. PDT combined with ferroptosis-promoting therapy has been found to be a promising strategy to improve anti-cancer therapy efficacy. Fenton reaction in ferroptosis can provide oxygen for PDT, and PDT can produce reactive oxygen species for Fenton reaction to enhance ferroptosis. In this review, we briefly present the importance of ferroptosis in anticancer treatment, mechanism of ferroptosis, researches on PDT induced ferroptosis, and the mechanism of the synergistic effect of PDT and ferroptosis on cancer killing. •Ferroptosis, a recently discovered programmed cell death modality, is actually a result of imbalanced redox homeostasis.•Cancers have some characteristics that make them susceptible to ferroptosis.•Photodynamic therapy (PDT), a widely used anti-cancer treatment, has been recently found to be able to induce ferroptosis.•The combination of PDT and ferroptosis inducing was proved great synergistic effect on cancer cells killing.