Liver-Targeted Near-Infrared Fluorescence/Photoacoustic Dual-Modal Probe for Real-Time Imaging of In Situ Hepatic Inflammation.

Early diagnosis of hepatic inflammation is the key to timely treatment and avoid the worsening of liver inflammation. Near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) probes have high sensitivity but low spatial resolution in lesion imaging, while photoacoustic (PA) imaging has good spatial location information. Therefore, the development of a NIRF/PA dual-modal probe integrated with high sensitivity and spatial location feedback can achieve an accurate early diagnosis of hepatic inflammation. Here, we report an activatable NIRF/PA dual-modal probe ( hCy-Tf-CA ) for the detection of the superoxide anion (O 2 ·- ) in early hepatic inflammation. hCy-Tf-CA showed high selectivity and sensitivity for detecting O 2 ·- fluctuation in vitro . More importantly, by introducing hepatocyte-targeting cholic acid ( CA ), the probe successfully achieved accurate in situ imaging of acute inflammatory liver injury (AILI) and autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) in vivo . The introduced CA not only promotes the hepatic targeting accumulation of probes but also improves the performance of low background dual-modal imaging in vivo . Therefore, hCy-Tf-CA provides an effective strategy for significantly improving in situ imaging performance and holds great potential for early, sensitive, and accurate diagnosis of hepatic inflammation.