Historical Account
1. PORPHYRINS
The word ‘Porphyrin’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Porphura’ which means purple. Rather the Greeks borrowed this term from the Phoenicians, who extracted a purple pigment from purpura mollusks to dye the garments of their royal family. Later, in the Byzantine Empire, the term porphyrogenitos, or "born to the purple", literally meant that the imperial heir was born after the fathers accession to the throne, in a palace room draped in the color. However, those with the misfortune to be born to the purple involved in porphyria--a group of diseases that result from abnormal accumulations of red and purple pigments produced by the body, called porphyrins.
Ref: www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-to-the-purple-the-st
Timeline:
1841 - Initial it was thought that the reddish color of blood was from iron. An experiment was performed to disprove this case. Dried blood was washed with concentrated sulfuric acid to free the iron. Then it was treated with alcohol and the resulting iron free residue was a reddish purple color
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Ref: http://www.porphyriafoundation.com/about-porphyria/history-of-porphyria
2. PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY (PDT)
1900: Oskar Raab, a German medical student discovered that living cells were destroyed when treated with a combination of acridine orange (dye) and light. His mentor, Hermann Von Tappiener, thus termed this ‘Photodynamic effect’ and suggested that this phenomena can play a crucial role in clinical medicine.
1920s: Policard noted that tumor tissue was inherently more fluorescent than healthy tissue. 1950s: Ronchese attempted to activate endogenous fluorescent molecules in tumor tissue to delineate its boundaries more accurately.
Between 1940 and 1960: Figge et al. and Rasmussen-Taxdal et al. administered natural porphyrins to patients and tumor-bearing animals in an attempt to more accurately detect tumor tissue by