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Updated: Aug 6, 2026
Revealing the Ferroptotic Phenotype of Medulloblastoma
Published on: March 15, 2024
Photoacoustic Probe for Rapidly Recognizing Superoxide Anion Affording Visualized Tracing of Ferroptosis-Mediated
Yidong Bin1, Lixian Huang1, Caiying Li1
1Key Laboratory for Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources (Ministry of Education of China), Guangxi Key Laboratory of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources, University Engineering Research Center for Chemistry of Characteristic Medicinal Resources (Guangxi), School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin541004, China.
Abstract:
As an emerging form of regulated cell death, ferroptosis has been identified as a key contributor to the pathogenesis of several diseases. Superoxide anion (O2•-), a key reactive oxygen species, is closely associated with ferroptosis-mediated acute liver injury (ALI). The development of in situ, real-time imaging tools capable of visualizing O2•- will benefit the early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention of ferroptosis-mediated ALI. In this work, we designed and synthesized a photoacoustic (PA) probe, Rho-DOH, based on a rhodamine scaffold, for the specific detection of O2•-. Rho-DOH exhibits a highly sensitive, selective, and fast PA response toward O2•-, characterized by a large bathochromic shift of 125 nm and an activation fold of up to 29-fold. Cellular experiments demonstrate that Rho-DOH enables high-contrast PA imaging of endogenous O2•- in cells. Moreover, Rho-DOH was successfully applied to detect the ferroptosis-mediated ALI and to evaluate therapeutic responses through its O2•--responsive PA imaging signal. These findings position Rho-DOH as a promising molecular imaging tool, offering robust support for the accurate diagnosis and treatment of ferroptosis-associated liver injury.
