Excited States and Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine

Book excerpt: Excited states and free radicals are involved in the normal physiology of living systems, in pathological processes (including lipid peroxidation, inflammation, Parkinson's disease, cancer, and aging), in the mechanisms of drug action, and in the photochemotherapies such as the PUVA therapy for skin diseases and PDT for cancer. This text introduces the reader to this rapidly expanding field, one that lies at the borderlines of physics, chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and medicine. The authors explore in particular how time-resolved spectroscopic methods have found solutions at the molecular level to biological and medical problems. Topics include the nature of excited states and free radicals and the techniques for their study, activated oxygen species, DNA, proteins, carotenoids and photosynthetic reaction centers, photodermatology and melanogenesis, and aspects of cancer related to radio-, chemo-, and photodynamic therapy. Researchers and graduate students in photochemistry, photobiology, photomedicine, radiation chemistry and biology, and cancer therapies will find this book to be of very significant interest.