The influence of intracellular mTHPC concentration upon photobleaching dynamics

In this study, we report the effect of the local photosensitizer concentration upon the dynamics of the singlet oxygen-mediated photobleaching, within formalin-fixed keratinocytes. Although the cells were incubated at a single mTHPC dose, cell-to-cell variations in concentration were defined within the perinuclear region by differences in the initial amplitude of the laser-induced fluorescence emission, located around 652 nm. At a fixed laser fluence-rate, it was found that the photobleaching, when plotted as a function of delivered light dose, proceeded more rapidly at higher drug concentration. The mTHPC spectral emission profile is shown to be approximately Lorentzian and remains unchanged as the photobleaching proceeds. This indicates that there is no perturbation of the detected signal due to the inner-filter effect.