A Highly Efficient Chemiluminescence Probe for the Detection of Singlet Oxygen in Living Cells.

Singlet oxygen is among the reactive oxygen species (ROS) with the shortest life-times in aqueous media because of its extremely high reactivity. Therefore, designing sensors for detection of O is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks in the field of molecular probes. Herein, we report a highly selective and sensitive chemiluminescence probe (SOCL-CPP) for the detection of O in living cells. The probe reacts with O to form a dioxetane that spontaneously decomposes under physiological conditions through a chemiexcitation pathway to emit green light with extraordinary intensity. SOCL-CPP demonstrated promising ability to detect and image intracellular O produced by a photosensitizer in HeLa cells during photodynamic therapy (PDT) mode of action. Our findings make SOCL-CPP the most effective known chemiluminescence probe for the detection of O . We anticipate that our chemiluminescence probe for O imaging would be useful in PDT-related applications and for monitoring O endogenously generated by cells in response to different stimuli.