A pocket-escaping design to prevent the common interference with near-infrared fluorescent probes in vivo

Panfei Xing, Yiming Niu, Ruoyu Mu, Zhenzhen Wang, Daping Xie, Huanling Li, Lei Dong and Chunming Wang ()
Additional contact information
Panfei Xing: University of Macau
Yiming Niu: University of Macau
Ruoyu Mu: University of Macau
Zhenzhen Wang: University of Macau
Daping Xie: University of Macau
Huanling Li: Nanjing University
Lei Dong: Nanjing University
Chunming Wang: University of Macau

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probes are among the most attractive chemical tools for biomedical imaging. However, their in vivo applications are hindered by albumin binding, generating unspecific fluorescence that masks the specific signal from the analyte. Here, combining experimental and docking methods, we elucidate that the reason for this problem is an acceptor (A) group-mediated capture of the dyes into hydrophobic pockets of albumin. This pocket-capturing phenomenon commonly applies to dyes designed under the twisted intramolecular charge-transfer (TICT) principle and, therefore, represents a generic but previously unidentified backdoor problem. Accordingly, we create a new A group that avoids being trapped into the albumin pockets (pocket-escaping) and thereby construct a NIR probe, BNLBN, which effectively prevents this backdoor problem with increased imaging accuracy for liver fibrosis in vivo. Overall, our study explains and overcomes a fundamental problem for the in vivo application of a broad class of bioimaging tools.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15323-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15323-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15323-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().