A practical strategy to develop isoform-selective near-infrared fluorescent probes for human cytochrome P450 enzymes

Currently, the development of selective fluorescent probes toward targeted enzymes is still a great challenge, due to the existence of numerous isoenzymes that share similar catalytic capacity. Herein, a double-filtering strategy was established to effectively develop isoenzyme-specific fluorescent probe(s) for cytochrome P450 (CYP) which are key enzymes involving in metabolism of endogenous substances and drugs. In the first-stage of our filtering approach, near-infrared (NIR) fluorophores with alkoxyl group were prepared for the screening of CYP-activated fluorescent substrates using a CYPs-dependent incubation system. In the second stage of our filtering approach, these candidates were further screened using reverse protein-ligand docking to effectively determine CYP isoenzyme-specific probe(s). Using our double-filtering approach, probes S9 and S10 were successfully developed for the real-time and selective detection of CYP2C9 and CYP2J2, respectively, to facilitate high-throughput screening and assessment of CYP2C9-mediated clinical drug interaction risks and CYP2J2-associated disease diagnosis. These observations suggest that our strategy could be used to develop the isoform-specific probes for CYPs.