Conjugated polymer nanoparticles with aggregation induced emission characteristics for intracellular Fe³⁺ sensing

Abstract

In this article, a novel zwitterionic conjugated polyelectrolyte containing tetraphenylethene unit was synthesized via Pd-catalyzed Sonogashira reaction. The resulting polymer (P2), which exhibited typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties, was weakly fluorescent in dilute DMSO solution and showed bright fluorescence emissions when aggregated in DMSO/water mixtures or fabricated into conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs). The nanoparticles from P2 could be prepared by reprecipitation method with an average diameter around 23 nm. Notably, the cell-staining efficiencies of lipid-P2 nanoparticles could be enhanced with lipid encapsulation and these nanoparticles were endocytosed via caveolaemediated and clathrin-mediated endocytosis pathways. Furthermore, the lipid-P2 nanoparticles with low cytotoxicity, high photostability and efficient cell staining ability could be employed for in vitro detection of Fe 31 ions in A549 cells.

Recent Advances in AIEgens for Metal Ion Biosensing and Bioimaging

“…Nevertheless, the abnormality in Fe 3+ has been revealed to correlate with many diseases, such as anemia, Parkinson's syndrome and cancer [89,90]. There have been many reports for Fe 3+ detection with AIE probes [91][92][93][94].…”

“…IQ44 can imaging cellular Fe 3+ in lysosomes, and is promising for studying related biological processes (Figure 8a) [91]. [93]. (c) TPE-BIMEG [94] (Reproduced with permission from [91,93,94]).…”

“…Fluorescence nanoparticles have been explored as sensors to sense Fe 3+ [93,94]. Wang et al synthesized a conjugated polymer P2 for sensing Fe 3+ (Figure 8b) [93]. This polymer containing TPE unit and zwitterionic unit.…”

“…This polymer containing TPE unit and zwitterionic unit. Then, DSPE-PEG 2000 was reprecipitated with P2, forming lipid-P2 NPs [93]. (c) TPE-BIMEG [94] (Reproduced with permission from [91,93,94]).…”

Exonuclease III-Regulated Target Cyclic Amplification-Based Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Detection Using Ultrathin Ternary Chalcogenide Nanosheets

“…Especially, high cost, complicated primer design, and specific enzyme recognition sites restrict their practical applications (Mhlanga and Malmberg, 2001;Nazarenko et al, 2002;Li et al, 2008;Gerasimova and Kolpashchikov, 2014;Chang et al, 2015;Huang et al, 2019). Over the past decades, nanomaterials have been greatly explored as biosensing platforms (Yang et al, 2016;Cai et al, 2018;Qiu et al, 2019;Zeng et al, 2019). As a new class of nanomaterials, single-and few-layered transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets have attracted tremendous attention (Chhowalla et al, 2013;Tan et al, 2017;Chen et al, 2018).…”