Fluorescence imaging techniques have been widely used to visualize biological molecules and phenomena. In particular, several studies on the development of small-molecule fluorescent probes have been carried out, because their fluorescence properties can be easily tuned by synthetic chemical modification. For this reason, various fluorescent probes have been developed for targeting biological components, such as proteins, peptides, amino acids, and ions, to the interior and exterior of cells. In this review, we cover advances in the development of 4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacene (BODIPY)-based fluorescent probes for biological studies over the past decade.

Osteoclasts are bone resorbing, multinucleate cells that differentiate from mononuclear macrophage/monocyte-lineage hematopoietic precursor cells. Although previous studies have revealed important molecular signals, how the bone resorptive functions of such cells are controlled in vivo remains less well characterized. Here, we visualized fluorescently labeled mature osteoclasts in intact mouse bone tissues using intravital multiphoton microscopy. Within this mature population, we observed cells with distinct motility behaviors and function, with the relative proportion of static -bone resorptive (R) to moving -nonresorptive (N) varying in accordance with the pathophysiological conditions of the bone. We also found that rapid application of the osteoclast-activation factor RANKL converted many N osteoclasts to R, suggesting a novel point of action in RANKL-mediated control of mature osteoclast function. Furthermore, we showed that Th17 cells, a subset of RANKL-expressing CD4 + T cells, could induce rapid N-to-R conversion of mature osteoclasts via cell-cell contact. These findings provide new insights into the activities of mature osteoclasts in situ and identify actions of RANKL-expressing Th17 cells in inflammatory bone destruction.

Intravital imaging by two-photon excitation microscopy (TPEM) has been widely used to visualize cell functions. However, small molecular probes (SMPs), commonly used for cell imaging, cannot be simply applied to intravital imaging because of the challenge of delivering them into target tissues, as well as their undesirable physicochemical properties for TPEM imaging. Here, we designed and developed a functional SMP with an active-targeting moiety, higher photostability, and a fluorescence switch and then imaged target cell activity by injecting the SMP into living mice. The combination of the rationally designed SMP with a fluorescent protein as a reporter of cell localization enabled quantitation of osteoclast activity and time-lapse imaging of its in vivo function associated with changes in cell deformation and membrane fluctuations. Real-time imaging revealed heterogenic behaviors of osteoclasts in vivo and provided insights into the mechanism of bone resorption.

The condensation reaction between 6‐hydroxy‐2‐cyanobenzothiazole (CBT) and cysteine has been shown for various applications such as site‐specific protein labelling and in vivo cancer imaging. This report further expands the substrate scope of this reaction by varying the substituents on aromatic nitriles and amino thiols and testing their reactivity and ability to form nanoparticles for cell imaging. The structure–activity relationship study leads to the identification of the minimum structural requirement for the macrocyclization and assembly process in forming nanoparticles. One of the scaffolds made of 2‐pyrimidinecarbonitrile and cysteine joined by a benzyl linker was applied to design fluorescent probes for imaging caspase‐3/7 and β‐galactosidase activity in live cells. These results demonstrate the generality of this system for imaging hydrolytic enzymes.