Enhancing antitumour immunity with photodynamic therapy

In this perspective, we present and discuss pre-clinical and some clinical studies demonstrating that local photodynamic therapy (PDT) per se is a treatment modality that can induce systemic anti-tumour immunity, however, the anti-tumour efficacy is strongly enhanced when PDT is combined with other treatment modalities, e.g., vaccines or ICI therapy. PDT has been recognized for over 30 years as a modality inducing strong immune effects in treated tumours. More recently, PDT has become perceived as a distinct type of immunogenic antitumor modality with an attractive potential for use as unique form of clinical cancer immunotherapy. It can be argued that PDT-inflicted tumour tissue injury provokes in situ vaccination effect. In the end of this perspective paper, we express our opinion of challenges and future directions in the field of PDT and PDT + immunotherapy.