Abstract
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has become an attractive option used in tumor treatment via its direct tumoricidal activities or its immune-boosting activities. On the other hand, heat shock protein 70 has been found to be largely associated with the establishment of anti-tumor activities offered by hyperthermia treated tumor cells. In the present study, we found that injection of tumor-bearing mice with colon cancer cell line CT-26 treated with haematoporphyrin based photodynamic therapy (hematoporphyrin monomethyl ether based PDT, HMME-PDT) together with hyperthermia demonstrated the most effective therapeutic effects against tumor growth, followed by cells treated by hyperthermia alone. CT-26 cells treated only with HMME-PDT failed to provide any therapeutic effects, although significant cell death was induced by HMME-PDT. Compared to hyperthermia treatment, HMME-PDT induced more efficient surface localization of HSP70 on CT-26 cells which correlated with efficient activation of cytolytic CD8 T cells and with effective anti-tumor responses. Thus, our study demonstrated that the surface expression of HSP70 may play a more important role than the total expression or release of this molecule in the activation of immune responses. And our study offered a novel modified PDT approach to the treatment of tumor cells intrinsically low on HSP70 expression.