BODIPY-GO nanocomposites decorated with a biocompatible branched ethylene glycol moiety for targeted PDT.

The properties of graphene oxide (GO) have received much attention and been applied to the exploration of potential applications in disease-related diagnostics and non-invasive therapy. One application, photodynamic therapy (PDT), involves the killing of cancer cells where singlet oxygen is generated with light irradiation of the appropriate wavelength. In this work, three new BODIPY derivatives (13-15), decorated with carbohydrate moieties for active targeting and branched ethylene glycol for biocompatibility, and their GO based nanocarriers were designed to study the singlet oxygen production and PDT efficiency.