A mitochondria-targeting nitroreductase fluorescent probe with large Stokes shift and long-wavelength emission for imaging hypoxic status in tumor cells.

Development of a mitochondria-targeting fluorescent probe with large Stokes shift and long-wavelength emission was benefit for accurate detection of hypoxic status, which was known as a major factor of the tumor physiology and influence important pathological processes. However, an efficient optical approach for simultaneously achieving such merits was still lacking. In this work, a turn-on fluorescence probe (HBT-NP) was designed to assess the hypoxic condition of tumor cells by detecting nitroreductase (NTR). Probe HBT-NP was constructed by conjugating 4-nitrobenzyl moiety as reaction site for NTR to 2-(benzo[d]thiazol-2-yl)-4-methylphenol derived fluorescent dye HBT-Py which demonstrated large Stokes shift (Δλ = 243 nm) and long wavelength emission (λem = 640 nm) due to intrinsic mechanism of ESIPT together with ICT process. Upon incubated with NTR, HBT-NP could successively undergo nitro reduction reaction and then release HBT-Py. The reaction mechanism was further confirmed by mass spectra and HPLC analysis, and the docking calculation also indicated that the binding mode and docking affinity of probe HBT-NP with NTR play an important role in catalytic reduction reaction process. As a result, HBT-NP displayed a wide linear range (0.1–1.5 μg/mL) and low detection limit (2.8 ng/mL) response to NTR, and could be used to evaluate hypoxic condition of cancer cells with precise mitochondria-targeting.