SummaryThe pharmacokinetic behaviour and phototherapeutic effectiveness of bis(di-isobutyloctadecylsiloxy)-2,3-naphthalocyanatosilicon (iso-BOSiNc) incorporated into dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine (DPPC) liposomes have been studied in Balb/c mice bearing an MS-2 fibrosarcoma. We found that iso-BOSiNc i.v. -injected at a dose of 0.5 mg kg-' b.w. is preferentially transported by serum lipoproteins; in particular, the photosensitiser is associated with LDL (57.8% of total recovery in the serum) and HDL (35.7%) while minor amounts are associated to VLDL (2.63%) and other serum proteins (3.89%), Iso-BOSiNc concentrations greater than 1 gig g-' of tissue are recovered from the tumour at 12 -48 h after administration while the ratio of iso-BOSiNc concentration in tumour and peritumoral tissue is greater than 10. Upon increasing the injected dose, the additional iso-BOSiNc is almost exclusively bound by HDL, which leads to large uptake of the photosensitiser by liver and spleen. The efficiency of iso-BOSiNc as a photodynamic agent was measured upon irradiation with a different dose-rate for a total light dose of 450 J cm-2. The extent of tumour necrotic area increases as a function of the time after the end of PDT treatment and reaches a maximum level after about 24 h. Moreover, the necrotic area is linearly dependent on the irradiation dose-rate up to 100 mW cm-2. In all there is substantial evidence that iso-BOSiNc delivered in a liposomal dispersion is a highly effective photosensitizer for PDT of tumours.Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a method of cancer treatment, based on photosensitisation of the tumour to selected wavelengths of visible light by phototherapeutic agents (Wilson & Jeeves, 1987). At present PDT is applied at the clinical level using haematoporphyrin-IX (Hp-IX) and haematoporphyrin derivative (HpD) (Dougherty, 1987) as photodynamic agents. However, Hp and HpD show a small efficiency of red light absorption; moreover, HpD is a highly heterogeneous mixture of porphyrins, while the clinically used Hp contains about 15% porphyrin-type impurities (Jori et al., 1983).Other classes of photosensitisers, such as phthalocyanines and chlorins, are provided with better red light-absorbing properties than Hp: their absorption maxima are located around 670 nm with extinction coefficients about 105 M-l cm-'; moreover, they are usually characterised by a good degree of purity (Zhou, 1989). Recently, naphthalocyanines have been proposed as PDT agents (Firey & Rodgers, 1987), since these compounds show intense absorption (a> IO M-l cm-') around 780 nm, namely in a spectral interval where light penetration through the skin is approximately twice that at 630 nm (Wilson & Jeeves, 1987).In this work we have studied the pharmacokinetic and phototherapeutic properties of bis(di-isobutyloctadecylsiloxy) -2,3-naphthalocyanato silicon (iso-BOSiNc) in mice bearing a transplanted tumour. Flash photolysis studies (Firey & Rodgers, 1987;Ford et al., 1988) have shown that isoBOSiNc triplet state has a long natural lifetime (331 ji...