Amy Houck Physics Senior Project
Amy Houck, BS in Physics December 1999
Amy is currently a graduate student in Health Physics at Texas A and M.
Oxygen consumption during merocynanine 540-mediated photodynamic therapy of leukemia cells
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) involves the interaction of light, dye and oxygen. Some research groups have been investigating the possibility of measuring oxygen in the tumor that is being treated to determine the progress of the treatment. We are interested in investigating the consumption of oxygen during PDT in a cultured cell suspension. These conditions are similar to photodynamic bone marrow purging which is used experimentally in the treatment of autologous bone marrow transplants. A previous student project by John Zullo found preliminary evidence of a relationship between oxygen consumption and cell killing during PDT for leukemia cells. This project will be a quantitative study to determine whether oxygen consumption can be used as a measure of cell killing. We will be using cells that are resistant to merocyanine 540 as well as cells that are sensitive to merocyanine 540.