A water-soluble AIE-active polyvalent glycocluster: design, synthesis and studies on carbohydrate-lectin interactions for visualization of Siglec distributions in living cell membranes.

In this work, we designed and synthesized an aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active tetraphenylethene-decorated pseudo-trisialic acid (TPE3S) and validated its high affinity for Siglecs using microscale thermophoresis techniques. TPE3S was a unique binding-on fluorescent trivalent sialocluster which was successfully utilized for the visualization of Siglecs expressed on the surface of mammalian cells.