To facilitate the understanding of the dynamic distribution and activity of lysosomal enzymes, it is highly desirable to develop high-fidelity near-infrared (NIR) activatable fluorescent probes. Here, we propose a general acceptor engineering strategy to construct NIR probes with lysosome-targeting capability. Upon isosteric replacement and additional functionalization, the β-gal-activatable probe OELyso-Gal exhibited excellent lysosome-targeting capability and favorable responsive performance to the enzyme of interest. Notably, the steric hindrance effect from acceptor engineering is modest, which renders the probe unprecedented affinity to enzymes. Upon the introduction of acceptor engineering, the lysosome-targeting probe became more sensitive to β-gal in cells and tissues, boosting the discrimination of high β-gal-expressing ovarian cancer tumours from low β-gal-expressing tissues. Furthermore, the superiority of OELyso-Gal was validated in real-time visualization of ovarian cancer in tumour-bearing mice. This elegant acceptor engineering strategy provides inspirational insights into the development of customized fluorescent probes for monitoring disease-associated biomarkers within subcellular organelles.
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