Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Contemporary therapies do not bring the expected effectiveness and the treatment is often non-selective and its application is associated with several side effects significant reducing the quality of life of patients underwent surgery and their long and expensive hospitalization. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) appears as suitable clinical treatment once is non-invasive technique and uses a photosensitizer (PS), oxygen and light irradiation to kill cancer cells. Perhaps the main limitation of PDT is oxygen once tumor is mainly hypoxic. In this lecture, we propose the use of nitric oxide derivative ruthenium compounds in anticancer therapy essentially using basic principles of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and X-PDT. The evaluation of photocytotoxic effects is described as a function of structure activity relationship as well the synergistic effect between nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by light irradiation in the therapeutic window or X-ray induced PDT with low radiation doses.
Acknowledgments: The authors thank CAPES, CNPq and Fapesp for financial support