Near-infrared fluorescent molecules show great potentials in the field of biomedical imaging applications due to their advantages such as high fluorescence quantum yield, good biocompatibility and plastic molecular structure. Nevertheless, most of the near-infrared small-molecule probes reported for tumor diagnosis can be easily metabolized or cleared out by the organisms, and exhibit short residence time in the targets of interest leading to poor tumorous accumulation and retention, which severely hinders their wide applications. Therefore, it’s of great significance to design and develop a novel type of near-infrared small-molecule probes that can be specifically anchored within the tumorous lesion for effective tumor imaging as well as imaging-guided surgery.

 Recently, Prof. Shi’s group have rationally designed and synthesized a novel protein sulfenic acid-reactive near-infrared molecular probe DATC. This probe displayed good target ability to mitochondria, and could act as a promising fluorescent probe for specific visualization of endogenous protein sulfenic acids expressed in mitochondrial. Moreover, the probe could be spontaneously fixed on site through the specific reaction and covalent binding to the sulfenic acids of oxidized proteins under oxidative stress, resulting in enhanced intracellular uptake and prolonged retention. We thus believe that this mitochondria-targeted and locational immobilization strategy may offer a new insight for long-term tumor imaging and effective therapy.

 Their work has been published in Analytical Chemistry (Analytical Chemistry, 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b05855), titled as “Sulfenic Acid-Mediated on-Site-Specific Immobilization of Mitochondrial-Targeted NIR Fluorescent Probe for Prolonged Tumor Imaging”.

Link to Paper：https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b05855

Link to Prof. Shi’ group：http://42.244.8.111/_s361/main.psp