Dual-Locked Near-Infrared Fluorescent Probes for Precise Detection of Melanoma via Hydrogen Peroxide-Tyrosinase Cascade Activation

  • Anal Chem. 2022 Jan 18;94(2):1070-1075. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c04058.
Haiyue Peng  1 ,  Ting Wang  1 ,  Guorui Li  1 ,  Jing Huang  1 ,  Quan Yuan  2
Affiliations
  • 1. Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine (ICBN), State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, School of Biomedical Sciences, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan 410082, China.
  • 2. State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan 410082, China.
PMID: 34958200 DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c04058
Abstract

Activity-based near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probes provide powerful tools for diagnosis of diseases. However, most of these probes suffer from low specificity due to "off-target" reaction. The dual-locked strategy, which utilizes two biomarkers as triggers, can increase the specificity and precision of diagnosis. Here, we report a dual-locked NIR probe, MB-m-borate, which releases fluorophore methylene blue (MB) after hydrogen peroxide-tyrosinase (H2O2-TYR) cascade activation. Both MB-m-borate and its intermediate MB-m-phenol (the product after H2O2 activation) show almost nondetectable fluorescence. MB-m-borate exhibits "turn on" fluorescence upon H2O2-TYR cascade activation. The further live cell bioimaging results indicate that MB-m-borate only responds to melanoma cells, providing it as a robust probe for precise detection of melanoma. Finally, the probe is applied for the diagnosis of melanoma in vivo with a xenogeneic mouse model.

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