Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Biotechnology of Chinese Traditional Medicine, College of Health Science and Engineering, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
Anal Chem. 2024 Sep 17;96(37):14843-14852. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.4c02629. Epub 2024 Sep 6.
Developing NIR-IIb luminescence probes with rapid visualization and a high penetration depth is essential for diabetes research. Combining a sensitizing switch with lanthanide-doped nanoparticles (LnNPs) has been employed to fabricate the NIR-IIb probes. However, these probes mainly adopt heptamethine cyanine dye as the antenna, and the NIR-IIb signal is activated by inhibiting the photoinduced electron transfer (PET) of the dye. Due to limited recognition units, this strategy makes many biomolecules undetectable, such as cysteine (Cys), which is closely related to diabetes. Herein, in this article, hemicyanine dye, NFL-OH, was verified as a new antenna to sensitize NIR-IIb emission from LnNPs. Unlike traditional cyanine dyes, hemicyanine's fluorescence intensity can also be modulated by intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), thereby expanding the range of detectable targets for NIR-IIb probes based on sensitization mechanism. Through switching the hemicyanine-sensitized NIR-IIb emission, we successfully fabricated an NFL-Cys-LnNPs' nanoprobe, which can effectively monitor Cys concentration in the liver of diabetic mice during diabetes progression and evaluate the efficacy of diabetic drugs. Our work not only presents an excellent tool for Cys imaging but also introduces new concepts for designing NIR-IIb probes.
开发具有快速可视化和高穿透深度的近红外二区（NIR-IIb）荧光探针对于糖尿病研究至关重要。将敏化开关与镧系掺杂纳米粒子（LnNPs）结合使用已被用于制造 NIR-IIb 探针。然而，这些探针主要采用七甲川花菁染料作为天线，通过抑制染料的光致电子转移（PET）来激活 NIR-IIb 信号。由于识别单元有限，这种策略使得许多生物分子无法检测到，例如半胱氨酸（Cys），它与糖尿病密切相关。在本文中，我们验证了半花菁染料 NFL-OH 作为一种新的天线来敏化 LnNPs 的 NIR-IIb 发射。与传统的花菁染料不同，半花菁的荧光强度也可以通过分子内电荷转移（ICT）进行调制，从而扩展了基于敏化机制的 NIR-IIb 探针的可检测目标范围。通过切换半花菁敏化的 NIR-IIb 发射，我们成功制备了一种 NFL-Cys-LnNPs 纳米探针，可有效监测糖尿病进展过程中糖尿病小鼠肝脏中的 Cys 浓度，并评估糖尿病药物的疗效。我们的工作不仅为 Cys 成像提供了一种出色的工具，还为设计 NIR-IIb 探针引入了新的概念。
