Comparison Study on Photodynamic Anticancer Activity of Multifunctional Magnetic Particles by Formation of Cations

In this paper, we have synthesized multifunctional magnetic particles (MNPs) using by two different ferrite submicrometer paticles (Fe₃O₄@HP and CoFe₂O₄@HP) with different surface properties. Two different multifunctional particles have the same particle sizes within the error tolerance of 4.5%. The concentration measurement of the hematoporphyrin (HP) molecule indicates that the weight of HP molecules bonded to the surface of the Fe₃O₄ particles is smaller than that of the CoFe₂O₄ particles. Moreover, we have evaluated their biocompatibilities and photodynamic anticancer activities on mammalian cells. The two MNPs have demonstrated that they both have good biocompatibilities without any cytotoxicity and anticancer activities in the concentration range of 0-50 μg/mL. Specifically, photodynamic-killing activities of both MNPs were measured to be 100% for CoFe₂O₄@HP, and were measured to be 37.9 ± 3.5% and 9.2 ± 2.5% for Fe₃O₄@HP in 25 and 50 μg/mL of both MNPs. These results suggest that both MNPs can be safely used to for clinical photodynamic cancer therapy, although the CoFe₂O₄@HP showed a slightly better photo-killing efficacy compared with the Fe₃O₄@HP in prostate cancer.