Fig. 4.

Treatment of ocular glioblastomas with nanodoxorubicin. A. Schematic diagram of the 20 nm PEG-porphyrin nanoparticle loaded in its core with doxorubicin (see Li et al., 2010 for details). 488 nm light excites doxorubicin: in solution its emission peak is at 590 nm; confined in the nanodox particle, excited doxorubicin non-radiatively transfers energy to the porphyrin, which has a FRET emission peak at ~680 nm. B. Fluorescence emission (ex 488 nm) from a GFP+ glioblastoma on different days after the transplant (yellow squares on fluorescence images indicate regions from which the emission spectra were taken). The spectrum and image of day 25 were taken without nanodox, while those of days 35 and 45 were taken after tail-vein injection of nanodox. The strong GFP emission of the glioblastoma cells dominates the mid-spectral range, but a distinctive emission band peaking at 680 nm is present: lower plot (“FRET”) shows the data in the dashed box of the upper plot on expanded scales. C. Limited (3X) treatment of Type 1 tumors with nanodox. Each symbol represents the tumor volume on the day of a treatment. D. Aggressive nanodox treatment of xenografts beginning around day 20 to 30 after transplantation. Treatment continued in each case until the tumor declined to ~50% of its maximal volume or less. The black filled symbols correspond to a Type 1 tumor (Fig. 3(A)) that reached a maximum volume of 420 nL. (In C, D tumor measurements are only plotted as symbols for the days of treatment; volume measurements from other days are not illustrated by discrete points, but rather presented by the continuous lines (splines), as in Fig. 3.). E. Treatment protocol illustrated in form of flow chart.