Frontiers in Chemistry (Feb 2024)

Development of an activatable far-red fluorescent probe for rapid visualization of hypochlorous acid in live cells and mice with neuroinflammation

  • Long Mi,
  • Changhe Niu,
  • Jianqiang Chen,
  • Feng Han,
  • Xueying Ji

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2024.1355238
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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Recent investigations have suggested that abnormally elevated levels of HOCl may be tightly related to the severity of neuroinflammation. Although some successes have been achieved, fluorescent probes with far-red fluorescence emission and capable of detecting HOCl with high specificity in pure aqueous solution are still urgently needed. Herein, a responsive far-red fluorescent probe, DCI-H, has been constructed to monitor HOCl activity in vivo and in vitro. DCI-H could rapidly respond to HOCl within 120 s and had a low detection limit for HOCl of 1.5 nM. Importantly, physiologically common interfering species, except for HOCl, did not cause a change in the fluorescence intensity of DCI-HOCl at 655 nm. The results of confocal imaging demonstrated the ability of DCI-H to visualize endogenous HOCl produced by MPO-catalyzed H2O2/Cl− and LPS stimulation. With the assistance of DCI-H, upregulation of HOCl levels was observed in the mice model of LPS-induced neuroinflammation. Thus, we believed that DCI-H provided a valuable tool for HOCl detection and diagnosis of inflammation-related diseases.

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