Cancer-Targeting and Viscosity-Activatable Near-Infrared Fluorescent Probe for Precise Cancer Cell Imaging.
Ming QianYuan YeTian-Bing RenBin XiongLin YuanXiao-Bing ZhangPublished in: Analytical chemistry (2024)
Small-molecule fluorescent probes have emerged as potential tools for cancer cell imaging-based diagnostic and therapeutic applications, but their limited selectivity and poor imaging contrast hinder their broad applications. To address these problems, we present the design and construction of a novel near-infrared (NIR) biotin-conjugated and viscosity-activatable fluorescent probe, named as QL-VB , for selective recognition and imaging of cancer cells. The designed probe exhibited a NIR emission at 680 nm, with a substantial Stokes shift of 100 nm and remarkably sensitive responses toward viscosity changes in solution. Importantly, QL-VB provided an evidently enhanced signal-to-noise ratio (SNR: 6.2) for the discrimination of cancer cells/normal cells, as compared with the control probe without biotin conjugation (SNR: 1.8). Moreover, we validated the capability of QL-VB for dynamic monitoring of stimulated viscosity changes within cancer cells and employed QL-VB for distinguishing breast cancer tissues from normal tissues in live mice with improved accuracy (SNR: 2.5) in comparison with the control probe (SNR: 1.8). All these findings indicated that the cancer-targeting and viscosity-activatable NIR fluorescent probe not only enables the mechanistic investigations of mitochondrial viscosity alterations within cancer cells but also holds the potential as a robust tool for cancer cell imaging-based applications.
Keyphrases
- fluorescent probe
- living cells
- high resolution
- small molecule
- fluorescence imaging
- photodynamic therapy
- gene expression
- mental health
- papillary thyroid
- cell proliferation
- metabolic syndrome
- adipose tissue
- drug delivery
- mass spectrometry
- single molecule
- computed tomography
- signaling pathway
- lymph node metastasis
- drug release