Tailorable Membrane-Penetrating Nanoplatform for Highly Efficient Organelle-Specific Localization

Given the breadth of currently arising opportunities and concerns associated with nanoparticles for biomedical imaging, various types of nanoparticles have been widely exploited, especially for cellular/subcellular level probing. However, most currently reported nanoparticles either have inefficient delivery into cells or lack specificity for intracellular destinations. The absence of well-defined nanoplatforms remains a critical challenge hindering practical nano-based bio-imaging. Herein, the authors elaborate on a tailorable membrane-penetrating nanoplatform as a carrier with encapsulated actives and decorated surfaces to tackle the above-mentioned issues. The tunable contents in such a versatile nanoplatform offer huge flexibility to reach the expected properties and functions. Aggregation-induced emission luminogen (AIEgen) is applied to achieve sought-after photophysical properties, specific targeting moieties are installed to give high affinity towards different desired organelles, and critical grafting of cell-penetrating cyclic disulfides (CPCDs) to promote cellular uptake efficiency without sacrificing the specificity. Hereafter, to validate its practicability, the tailored nano products are successfully applied to track the dynamic correlation between mitochondria and lysosomes during autophagy. The authors believe that the strategy and described materials can facilitate the development of functional nanomaterials for various life science applications.