Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical 298 (2009) 17–22
Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/molcata
Preparation and photoactivity of a novel water-soluble, polymerizable zinc
phthalocyanine
∗
Xiaoyuan Shen, Wangyang Lu, Guihua Feng, Yuyuan Yao, Wenxing Chen
Key Laboratory of Advanced Textile Materials and Manufacturing Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 18 January 2008
Received in revised form
A novel water-soluble and polymerizable photosensitizer, zinc tetra(N-carbonylacrylic)aminophtha-
locyanine (Zn-MPc), was synthesized by the ornament of zinc tetraaminophthalocyanine (Zn-APc) with
1
maleic anhydride and characterized by H NMR, FT-IR, and MALDI-TOF mass spectra. The photoactiv-
18 September 2008
ity of Zn-MPc was determined by tracking the degradation of 1,3-diphenylisobenzofuran (DPBF). The
results indicated that Zn-MPc is an efficient photosensitizer and has a high photostability. The apparent
rate constant, ka, of DPBF photodegradation increased with the increase of the Zn-MPc concentration
or light intensity, but declined with the increase of the initial concentration of DPBF. Furthermore, the
Accepted 23 September 2008
Available online 2 October 2008
Keywords:
Zinc tetra(N-
carbonylacrylic)aminophthalocyanine
Photoactivity
−
5
0.51
0.54 1.35
kinetics equation was deduced as Rd = 1.12 × 10 [DPBF] [Zn-MPc]
E
. The results in this work pro-
vide a basis for the further development of more desirable phtotosensitizers and their applications in
photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer.
Water-soluble
Polymerizable
© 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Singlet oxygen
1. Introduction
ity [15–17]. The effective strategies to prevent such aggregation
involve the introduction of polymeric substituents to the peripheral
Zinc phthalocyanines (Zn-Pcs) as one class of efficient pho-
tosensitizers have attracted considerable interest, which can be
used in the photodynamic therapy of cancer (PDT) [1,2], water
treatment [3–5], and fine chemical synthesis [6–8], etc. Among
these applications, PDT is currently the object of intense inves-
tigation due to their high efficiency to generate singlet oxygen,
intense absorption in the optimally tissue-penetrating spectral
region (630–800 nm) and lack of dark toxicity [9,2]. However,
this application is greatly limited by their insolubility in water,
which strongly influences the bioavailability and in vivo distribu-
tion [10]. Therefore, the enhancement of their water solubility is
the important aim of studies on the chemistry of Zn-Pcs. Several
aqueous soluble Zn-Pcs, such as tetrasulfonated Zn-Pc [11], tetra-
and octa-triethyleneoxysulfonyl substituted Zn-Pc [12], [1,2,3,4-
tetrakis(␣/-d-galactopyranos-6-yl)-phthalocyaninato] zinc [13],
Zn-Pc containing four carboxyphenyloxy substituents (p-HPcZn)
benzene rings [18] and conjugation with polymers [19–21]. Fur-
thermore, via adjusting the size of the polymeric substituents and
polymers or incorporating site-selective moieties, the biodistribu-
tion of the photosensitizers can be improved, and these systems
may be used for targeted delivery and release of photosensitiz-
ers [18,22]. Whereas, most of the water-soluble Zn-Pcs reported,
including those mentioned above, are lack of founctional groups
for further design of photosensitizers to satisfy various require-
ments, thus the exploration of Zn-Pcs which have high aqueous
solubility and are facile to chemical modification is particularly
attractive.
Herein, we reported a novel water-soluble Zn-Pc with unsat-
urated double bonds, zinc tetra(N-carbonylacrylic)aminophtha-
locyanine (Zn-MPc). Moreover, the special molecular structure of
Zn-MPc supplies extensive space for the further design of flex-
ible molecular, effectively preventing the aggregation of Zn-Pcs
and exhibiting desirable photoactivity. Since PDT activity is mainly
based on singlet oxygen [23], 1,3-dphenyl isobenzofuran (DPBF) as a
specific scavenger of this toxic species [24–26] is chosen to evaluate
the photoactivity of Zn-MPc, and the kinetics of DPBF degradation
is investigated. A thermosensitive macromolecular photosensitizer
with desirable photoactivity and PDT selectivity based on Zn-
MPc is currently being explored in our labs and will be reported
soon.
[
14], have been successfully prepared. However, they tend to aggre-
gate at relatively low concentrations in aqueous media. These
and negatively result in the significant reduce of the photoactiv-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 571 8684 3251 fax: +86 571 8684 3251.
1381-1169/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.molcata.2008.09.023