Zheng Zhenyu, Zhou Taotao, Hu Rong, Huang Minjun, Ao Xiang, Chu Jun, Jiang Tao, Qin Anjun, Zhang Zhongmin
Department of Orthopaedics, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Southern Medical University, Academy of Orthopaedics, Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, 510630, China.
State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China.
Bioact Mater. 2020 Jul 10;5(4):1018-1025. doi: 10.1016/j.bioactmat.2020.06.020. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Osteogenic differentiation is the basis of bone growth and repair related to many diseases, in which evaluating the degree and ability of osteogenic transformation is quite important and highly desirable. However, fixing or stopping the growth of cells is required for conventional methods to monitor osteogenic differentiation, which cannot realize the full investigation of the dynamic process. Herein, a new anion conjugated polymer featuring aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics is developed with excellent solubility for monitoring the process of osteogenic differentiation. This novel polymer can bind with osteogenic differentiated cells, and the intracellular fluorescence increases gradually with the enhancement of osteogenic differentiation. Moreover, it possesses good biosafety with negligible effect on cell activity and osteogenic differentiation, which cannot be realized by the typical method of Alizarin Red S staining. Further study shows that the polymer crosses the cell membrane through endocytosis and enriches in lysosomes, whereas no obvious fluorescence is detected with other cells, including non-differentiated osteoblast cells, under the same conditions, demonstrating the high selectivity. This is the first fluorescent probe with excellent specificity to realize real-time observation of the process of osteogenic differentiation. Therefore, PTB-EDTA shows great promise in the study of osteogenic differentiation and related applications.
成骨分化是与许多疾病相关的骨生长和修复的基础，其中评估成骨转化的程度和能力非常重要且备受期待。然而，传统的监测成骨分化的方法需要固定或停止细胞生长，这无法全面研究动态过程。在此，开发了一种具有聚集诱导发光（AIE）特性的新型阴离子共轭聚合物，其具有优异的溶解性，用于监测成骨分化过程。这种新型聚合物可以与成骨分化细胞结合，并且随着成骨分化的增强，细胞内荧光逐渐增加。此外，它具有良好的生物安全性，对细胞活性和成骨分化的影响可忽略不计，这是茜素红S染色的典型方法无法实现的。进一步研究表明，该聚合物通过内吞作用穿过细胞膜并在溶酶体中富集，而在相同条件下，包括未分化的成骨细胞在内的其他细胞未检测到明显荧光，表明其具有高选择性。这是第一个具有优异特异性的荧光探针，可实现对成骨分化过程的实时观察。因此，PTB-EDTA在成骨分化研究及相关应用中显示出巨大潜力。
