Rhodamine: Promising Theranostic Agent in Cancer Therapy.

Rhodamine dyes have important application as a biomarker in the field of biology especially in biotechnology, as fluorescence chemosensors, bioimaging and in several industries. Unique characteristic features of rhodamine moiety have attracted the attention of the researchers currently. In this review article we have discussed rhodamine-based derivatives, their metal complexes and the application in the field of cancer biology. Rhodamine containing scaffolds have been shown to exhibit important mitochondria and lysosome targeting property, they can be used as PDT agent. In vitro and in vivo studies have been conducted for several rhodamine-based compounds and their metal complexes and received excellent results. Exploring this less explored field will lead to the development of rhodamine-based photosensitizers for the simultaneous detection and diagnosis process in the field of cancer biology.