Cancer is a serious threat to human health, and there is an urgent need to develop new treatment methods to overcome it. Organelle targeting therapy, as a highly effective and less toxic side effect treatment strategy, has great research significance and development prospects. Being an essential organelle, the Golgi apparatus plays a particularly major role in the growth of cancer cells. Acting as an indispensable and highly expressed antioxidant in cancer cells, glutathione (GSH) also contributes greatly during the Golgi oxidative stress. Therefore, it counts for much to track the changes of GSH concentration in Golgi for monitoring the occurrence and development of tumor cells, and exploring Golgi-targeted therapy is also extremely important for effective treatment of cancer. In this work, we designed and synthesized a simple Golgi-targeting fluorescent probe GT-GSH for accurately detecting GSH. The probe GT-GSH reacting with GSH decomposes toxic substances to Golgi, thereby killing cancer cells. At the same time, the ratiometric fluorescent probe can detect the concentration changes of GSH in Golgi stress with high sensitivity and selectivity in living cells. Therefore, such a GSH-responsive fluorescent probe with a Golgi-targeted therapy effect gives a new method for accurate treatment of cancer.

An Integrated Fluorescent Probe for Ratiometric Detection of Glutathione in the Golgi Apparatus and Activated Organelle-Targeted Therapy.

A comprehensive compendium of literature of 1,8-Naphthalimide based chemosensors from 2017 to 2021

Chemosensors based on traditional fluorescent dyes have always contributed to the development of chemical sensor areas. In this review, the rhodamine-based chemosensors’ improvements and applications from 2018 to 2022 are discussed, mainly focusing on cations (metal ions and H+), anions (CN−, F−, etc.), and small bio-functional molecules’ (thiols, amino acids, etc.) detection. Specifically, this review highlights the detection target, detection limit, detection solution system, detection mechanism, and performance of the rhodamine-based sensors. Although these rhodamine-based sensors are well developed, their repeatability and sensitivity still need significant improvement. This review is expected to bring new clues and bright ideas to researchers for further advances in rhodamine-based chemosensors in the future.

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Recent Developments in Rhodamine-Based Chemosensors: A Review of the Years 2018–2022

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and formaldehyde (FA) are primary pollutants that are discharged by factories, and they can interact with each other to form secondary organic aerosols that harm human health. In organisms, SO2 can be produced by cysteine, which is also a component of GSH. The deficiency of GSH will affect the metabolism of FA. With that in mind, we developed a fluorescent probe CB-NIR that can be used to reversibly detect the volatility of SO2 and FA in vitro and in vivo in real time. The probe CB-NIR connects benzopyrylium and coumarin with conjugate bridge to reversibly detect SO2 and FA, which can emit longer NIR wavelengths. Accordingly, CB-NIR have many optical advantages, such as, high sensitivity, excellent selectivity, fast response in forward and reverse directions, large emission shift, good reversibility and naked-eye observation. In addition, to our knowledge, CB-NIR is the first reversible probe for SO2 and FA with fluorescence emission wavelength exceeding 700 nm. Furthermore, the probe can not only detect the volatility of SO2 and FA in organisms, but also monitor the time-dependent SO2 and FA changes in real time. 

A reversible NIR fluorescent probe for monitoring of SO2 and formaldehyde in live cells and zebrafish

Herein, an ultrasensitive and versatile electrochemical biosensor was developed through the target-controlled capture and release of signal probe-loaded DNA nanotube for the ultrasensitive detection of two different types of cancer-related biomarkers, microRNA-21 (miRNA-21) and glutathione (GSH). In this system, target 1 (miRNA-21) first triggered duplex-specific nuclease (DSN)-assisted recycle amplification to generate numerous disulfide-linked DNA strands (DL), which could effectively capture DNA nanotube to immobilize methylene blue (MB) to produce remarkable electrochemical signals and achieve the ultrasensitive detection of miRNA-21 with a detection limit down to 32.6 aM. Furthermore, in the presence of target 2 (GSH), the electrochemical signal was significantly reduced by a thiol-disulfide bond exchange reaction on DL to release MB-immobilized DNA nanotubes away from the sensing interface, which enabled the sensitive analysis of GSH with a detection limit of 0.379 nM. Impressively, this strategy could achieve ultrasensitive detection of different types of biomarkers to prominently lessen false-positive responses from the current sensing methods toward a single biomarker or the same type of biomarker and remarkably heighten the accuracy and precision of early cancer diagnosis. Meanwhile, the proposed electrochemical biosensor made it possible to realize the regenerative analysis of targets over four times without extra fuel, which could conspicuously improve the analytical efficiency compared with that of traditional biosensing assays. As a result, this study might open up novel insights to design a versatile and multifunctional sensing platform and encourage deeper exploration for detecting different types of biomarkers in the fields of early disease diagnosis and biochemical research.

Versatile Electrochemical Biosensor Based on the Target-Controlled Capture and Release of DNA Nanotubes for the Ultrasensitive Detection of Multiplexed Biomarkers.

Recent advances in 4-hydroxy-1,8-naphthalimide-based small-molecule fluorescent probes

Recent Advances in Golgi-Targeted Small-Molecule Fluorescent Probes

Rational design of a water-soluble TICT-AIEE-active fluorescent probe for mercury ion detection.

Early treatment is the best choice for cancer treatment. But there are many difficulties in the early diagnosis of cancer. Fluorescent probes can be used to detect small molecules or proteins overexpressed in tumor cells as a screening tool for tumor cells. However, many analytes are not specifically expressed in tumor cells. Therefore, the sensitivity and accuracy are both limited. Previous studies have shown that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is overexpressed in tumor cells. Similarly, melatonin can effectively bind to G-protein coupled receptors (MT1 and MT2), which are also overexpressed in some types of tumor cells. Hence, we constructed a novel melatonin-based targetable H2O2 fluorescent probe for precisely screening tumor cells. The results showed that the proposed probe can successfully detect endogenous and exogenous H2O2 in living cells and zebrafish, and accurately screen tumor cells. Importantly, this work not only proves the potential targeting capability of melatonin for tumor cells, but also provides new strategy of targeting plus activation for tumor cells screening. Moreover, the proposed probe in this work can serve as a potential tool for early diagnosis of cancer.

Meijun Su

Papers

Recent advances in 4-hydroxy-1,8-naphthalimide-based small-molecule fluorescent probes

An Integrated Fluorescent Probe for Ratiometric Detection of Glutathione in the Golgi Apparatus and Activated Organelle-Targeted Therapy.

Recent Advances in Golgi-Targeted Small-Molecule Fluorescent Probes

Rational design of a water-soluble TICT-AIEE-active fluorescent probe for mercury ion detection.

A melatonin-based targetable fluorescent probe activated by hydrogen peroxide for tumor cells screening