The imbalance concentration of tissue oxygen level leads to a hypoxia effect which are generally occurred in solid tumor. Therefore, it is very important to develop fluorescent probes to monitor the hypoxia condition for cancer diagnosis. The degree of tumor hypoxia can be determined by the expression level of nitroreductase (NTR), which is one important enzyme overexpressed in solid tumors. In this work, we designed and synthesized a water-soluble near-infrared fluorescent probe that have a high recognition of NTR in hypoxic tumor. The probe shows extremely fluorescence in the absence of nitroreductase. Moreoever, its fluorescent intensity increased 10000-fold in 5 minutes in the presence of nitroreductase at 37 <sup>o</sup>C. The probe shows linear responses to nitroreductase concentrations from 0.025 ng/mL to 1.25 ng/mL with a detection limit of 0.01 ng/mL, which is highest sensitivity among reported nitroreductase fluorescent probes. The probe shows a fast and ultrasensitive fluorescence response to nitroreductase in live cancer cells and provides a promising application in cancer diagnosis.

Near-infrared fluorescent probe for fast and ultrasensitive detection of nitroreductase in live cells

2019 Fall National Meeting

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