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Near-Infrared AIE Dots with Chemiluminescence for Deep-Tissue Imaging
Chenchen Liu1, Xiuxia Wang2, Junkai Liu1
1Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering, Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, Institute for Advanced Study, Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
Abstract:
Near-infrared (NIR) chemiluminescence (CL) emission is highly favorable for deep-tissue imaging, but chemically conjugated NIR CL emitters with the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) property for biotechnology are seldom reported. Herein, an AIE-active NIR CL emitter, TBL, is synthesized by conjugating luminol unit with electron-accepting benzothiadiazole and an electron-donating triphenylamine, and subsequently TBL dots are prepared by using F127 as the surfactant. The CL emission of TBL dots can last continuously for over 60 min and can be employed for quantitative (in vitro) and qualitative (in vivo) detection of 1 O2 . Strikingly, the NIR CL emission can penetrate through tissues with a total thickness of over 3 cm, exhibiting significantly better performance than NIR fluorescence emission and blue CL emission. Moreover, the successful differentiation of tumor and normal tissues by TBL-based CL imaging in vivo also paves the way for CL-guided cancer diagnosis and surgery.
