Recently, the use of photodynamic therapy grows as an alternative treatment for cancer, since it has a noninvasive characteristic and affinity to the tumor tissue. Accordingly, understanding the therapy's foci of action is important for the technique improvement. This work aims to understand the genotoxic effect triggered by the therapy action, thus evidencing the permanent changes caused to the genetic material of the tumor cell after the treatment. Therefore, to increase the knowledge in this study field, the methodology of the comet assay and count of micronucleus formed after the therapy was adopted in order to understand if the damage caused to the DNA of tumor cell makes its replication process unfeasible in future generations. The study allows a better therapeutic approach to the cancer treatment, making the process of association between therapies a more effective option during the disease treatment.
Keywords: Cancer; DNA; cell; damage; genotoxicity; photodynamic.