Engineering porphyrin- phospholipid nanostructures for medical imaging and therapy

The recent development of porphyrins conjugated to phospholipid side chains has opened new possibilities for novel techniques in medical imaging and therapy applications. Porphyrin-phospholipids(PoPs) can self-assemble into nanovesicles such as liposomes or porphysomes which have intrinsic utility in theranostics(Carter et al. 2014; Huynh and Zheng 2014a; Komatsu et al. 2002; Lovell et al. 2011a). With the recent rise of nanomedical engineering (Luo et al. 2015), PoPs promise to be versatile tools for this purpose since they can form or coat other nanoscale structures in order to introduce additional capabilities (Ng et al. 2013; Rieffel et al. 2015a; Tam and McVeigh 2012). As such, PoPs can be a useful and straightforward tool to develop new types of advanced hybrid nanomaterials for medical applications.