Organic Nanoprobe Cocktails for Multilocal and Multicolor Fluorescence Imaging of Reactive Oxygen Species.

Yin, Chao; Zhu, Houjuan; Xie, Chen; Zhang, Lei; Chen, Peng; Fan, Quli; Huang, Wei; Pu, Kanyi

Hypochlorite (ClO−) as a highly reactive oxygen species not only acts as a powerful 'guarder' in innate host defense but also regulates inflammation-related pathological conditions. Despite the availability of fluorescence probes for detection of ClO− in cells, most of them can only detect ClO− in single cellular organelle, limiting the capability to fully elucidate the synergistic effect of different organelles on the generation of ClO−. This study proposes a nanoprobe cocktail approach for multicolor and multiorganelle imaging of ClO− in cells. Two semiconducting oligomers with different π-conjugation length are synthesized, both of which contain phenothiazine to specifically react with ClO− but show different fluorescent color responses. These sensing components are self-assembled into the nanoprobes with the ability to target cellular lysosome and mitochondria, respectively. The mixture of these nanoprobes forms a nano-cocktail that allows for simultaneous imaging of elevated level of ClO− in lysosome and mitochondria according to fluorescence color variations under selective excitation of each nanoprobe. Thus, this study provides a general concept to design probe cocktails for multilocal and multicolor imaging.

FLUORESCENCE; REACTIVE oxygen species; HYPOCHLORITES; INFLAMMATION treatment; NANOMEDICINE; OLIGOMERS

Advanced Functional Materials, 2017, Vol 27, Issue 23, pn/a

1616-301X

Academic Journal

10.1002/adfm.201700493