Recent developments in visible light activatable photolabile caging groups

摘要

Traditional pharmacology often encounters the fundamental issue of poor drug selectivity.1,2 Although poor selectivity leads to a host of issues including undesired side-effects, in early stages of drug development more basic issues of accurately identifying targets is of concern. The ability to precisely control when and where drug activation occurs enables one to overcome many problems associated with poor selectivity. Photopharmacology focusses on the utilisation of light to externally control the pharmacological activity of drugs in diseased cells and tissues.3-6 In this context, light serves as a valuable external stimulus as it is non-invasive and offers a high degree of orthogonality, its wavelength and intensity can be controlled with ease, and it can be delivered with high spatial and temporal resolution. These features make light an ideal input stimulus for applications in biological settings, and when combined with light-responsive therapeutics, enables one to probe and regulate bio-relevant mechanisms with superior precision, addressing some of the underlying challenges associated with poor selectivity.