As a burgeoning non-invasive indicator for reproducible cancer diagnosis, tumor-related biomarkers have a wide range of applications in early cancer screening, efficacy monitoring, and prognosis predicting. Accurate and efficient biomarker determination, therefore, is of great importance to prevent cancer progression at an early stage, thus reducing the disease burden on the entire population, and facilitating advanced therapies for cancer. During the last few years, various DNA structure-based fluorescent probes have established a versatile platform for biological measurements, due to their inherent biocompatibility, excellent capacity to recognize nucleic and non-nucleic acid targets, obvious accessibility to synthesis as well as chemical modification, and the ease of interfacing with signal amplification protocols. After decades of research, DNA fluorescent probe technology for detecting tumor-related mRNAs has gradually grown to maturity, especially the advent of fluorescent nanoprobes has taken the process to a new level. Here, a systematic introduction to recent trends and advances focusing on various nanomaterials-related DNA fluorescent probes and the physicochemical properties of various involved nanomaterials (such as AuNP, GO, MnO2, SiO2, AuNR, etc.) are also presented in detail. Further, the strengths and weaknesses of existing probes were described and their progress in the detection of tumor-related mRNAs was illustrated. Also, the salient challenges were discussed later, with a few potential solutions.
The greatest barrier to the further development and clinical application of tumor image‐guided photodynamic therapy (PDT), is the inconsistency between the fluorescence intensity and singlet oxygen generation yield of the photosensitizer under light excitation. Herein, a novel donor–acceptor (D–A) system is designed from the point of molecular selection by wrapping a classical porphyrin molecule (5,10,15,20‐tetraphenylphorphyrin, H2TPP) as an acceptor into conjugated polymer (Poly[N,N'‐bis(4‐butylpheny)‐N,N'‐bis(phenyl)benzidine], ADS254BE) as a donor through fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) mechanism, which exhibits bright red emission centered at 650 nm (quantum yield, 0.12), relatively large Stoke shift of 276 nm, enhanced singlet oxygen generation rate of 0.73, and excellent photostability. The investigations on distribution and killing effect of nanomaterials in cancer cells reveal that ADS254BE/H2TPP NPs can accumulate in the cytoplasm for imaging while simultaneously producing a large amount of singlet oxygen to remarkably kill cancer cells, which can be used for real‐time image‐guided PDT. In the xenograft tumor model, real‐time imaging and long‐term tracing in tumor tissue with ADS254BE/H2TPP NPs disclose that the growth of lung cancer in mice can be effectively inhibited during in situ imaging. From the standpoint of molecular engineering design, this work provides a feasible strategy for novel D–A systems to improve the development of image‐guided PDT.
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