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We reported the development of new nanoscale drug carriers, chitosan-based nanoparticles (CNPs) that can be used for photodynamic therapy. These carriers could encapsulate a photosensitizer, protophorphyrin IX (PpIX), and deliver it to tumor tissue. We already reported that CNPs presented the enhanced tumor target specificity in cancer therapy and imbibed various water insoluble anticancer agents into the hydrophobic multicores of nanoscale particles. In this study, we prepared photosensitizer-encapsulated CNPs by self-assembling amphiphilic glycol chitosan–5β-cholanic acid conjugates in an aqueous environment and then encapsulating the water-insoluble photosensitizer (PpIX), with high drug-loading efficiency (>90%) by using a dialysis method. Freshly prepared PpIX-encapsulated CNPs (PpIX-CNPs) had an average diameter of 290nm and were stable in aqueous solutions for 1 month. As …