In vitro investigation of squarin-containing hydrogels and their anticancer properties

Cancer is a large friendship group that occurs when the abnormal flow rapidly breaks down and spreads to other tissues and organs and invades them. Cancer involves, most importantly, deaths. Today, surgical intervention, healing and radiotherapy are the most used methods in the fight against cancer. However, these treatment methods alone are not always sufficient and may even have severe side effects. For this reason, intense efforts are being made to develop drug treatment methods and new generation materials suitable for these methods. Among the innovative therapy methods, photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a therapy based on the principle of treating and releasing patients' injured exposure. It has become the focus of attention of individuals due to reasons such as its short treatment technology, low cost, high selectivity, low power, non-invasiveness and low side effects. Within the scope of the thesis study, a water-soluble squaraine dye, which can be a photodynamic therapy agent, was designed, synthesized, characterized, and biomedical imaging and photodynamic therapy (PDT) applications were tested with in vitro studies. The unique properties of squarainin 1, such as high absorption, emission, quantum efficiency and brightness, had a positive impact on other stages of the study. Polyacrylamide (PAAm) and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) based photodynamic hydrogels were obtained with squarinin. Synthesis, characterization and photodynamic therapy (PDT) applications of hydrogels were examined through in vitro studies. Keywords: Photodynamic Therapy, Hydrogel, Photosensitizer, Squaraine