Studying the cellular distribution of highly phototoxic platinated metalloporphyrins using isotope labelling

Novel tetraplatinated metalloporphyrin-based photosensitizers (PSs) are reported, which show excellent phototoxic indexes up to 5800 against HeLa cells, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest value reported for any porphyrin so far. Furthermore, 67 Zn isotope labelling allowed to determine the ratio of zinc to platinum inside the cells by ICP-MS.