A novel off-on fluorescent probe for sensitive imaging of mitochondria-specific nitroreductase activity in living tumor cells

作者：Huang, Bo; Chen, Wen; Kuang, Yong-Qing; Liu, Wei; Liu, Xian-Jun; Tang, Li-Juan^*; Jiang, Jian-Hui^*

来源：Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 2017, 15(20): 4383-4389.

DOI：10.1039/c7ob00781g

• IN-VIVO
• HYPOXIC-TUMOR
• SELECTIVE DETECTION
• ESCHERICHIA-COLI
• THERAPY
• ENZYME
• CONJUGATE
• CYANINE
• TISSUES
• DESIGN

Sensitive and selective detection and imaging of nitroreductase (NTR) in cancer cells is of great importance for better understanding their biological functions. Since there are a few fluorescent probes concerning NTR activity specifically located in mitochondria, we developed a novel fluorescent benzo-indocyanine probe (BICP) for mitochondrial NTR activity monitoring and imaging via extending a benzo-indole moiety into a benzoindocyanine based fluorophore (BICF) with a strong intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) effect and incorporating 4-nitrobenzyl as a fluorescence-quenching and enzyme-responsive moiety. Live cell imaging of HeLa and A549 demonstrates that the developed BICP is able to realize sensitive and selective mitochondrial NTR activity probing with high-contrast "off-on" fluorescence. These findings implied the great potential of the developed probe for monitoring mitochondrial-specific NTR activities in living cells and related applications in cell biology.

• 出版日期2017-5-28
• 单位湖南大学; 化学生物传感与计量学国家重点实验室