Activity-Based Imaging of Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor with a Two-Photon Fluorescent Probe

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), as a cytokine, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cancer and some other diseases, and it is also one of the potential drug targets for disease treatment. However, due to the lack of simple and effective MIF imaging detection tools, the fluctuation and distribution of MIF in living cells or at lesion sites remain difficult to track precisely and in real time. Here, we report activity-based fluorescent probes, named MIFP1-MIFP3, which are used for real-time imaging and tracking of intracellular MIF, thus establishing a relationship between the fluctuation of MIF and the change of fluorescence signal during the cancer disease process. With the excellent optical properties of two-photon probe imaging, we can easily distinguish multiple cancer cells from normal cells with the representative probe, MIFP3. Moreover, MIFP3 has also been successfully used to directly identify the pathological tissues of patients with clinical liver cancer. These potential MIF probes could provide powerful tools for further study of the physiological function of MIF and will be helpful to promote the accurate diagnosis and therapeutic evaluation of MIF-associated malignancies.