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Welcome to PhotoBiotics

PhotoBiotics has been established at Imperial College, London since 2001. In that year, PhotoBiotics was the first outright winner of the Hewlett-Packard award for innovation in a Europe-wide competition involving university spin-out companies, for exploiting its unusually distinctive in-house multidisciplinary capabilities.

These include of a unique blend of synthetic chemistry, photophysics and photochemistry, combined with biotechnology, enabling the development of proven superior targeted approaches to photodynamic therapy (PDT). In 2006, the company was awarded an EU grant of €300,000.

PDT already has an established a niche in the treatment of certain cancers and in age related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of visual impairment in the over 50’s.

As currently practiced, PDT makes use of fibre-optically-guided cold red laser light to irradiate a lesion, and an intravenously delivered photosensitising agent. The clinical effects of PDT derive from the cytotoxicity of a particularly reactive form of oxygen called singlet oxygen generated in situ by the action of light on the photosensitiser in the presence of molecular oxygen present in the tissues. However, the systemic presence of the photosensitiser leaves the patient acutely photosensitive to ambient light for some time after treatment. PhotoBiotics uniquely targeted approach to PDT will overcome ambient light photosensitivity and reduce treatment times.