Novel Fluorescent Probes for Selective Detection and Imaging of Superoxide, Hydrogen Peroxide, Hypochlorous Acid, Hydroxyl Radical, and Peroxynitrite

Abstract

Reactive oxygen species and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) play diverse roles in oxidative stress and redox signaling processes, which are regarded as key regulators in human health and disease. However, a lack of reliable molecular probes has hampered the mechanistic investigations in redox biology and medicine. Traditional probes with poor selectivity are no longer suitable to study individual ROS/RNS in complex biological processes, especially specific redox signaling. To address this gap, our lab has developed new chemical strategies with excellent selectivity and sensitivity toward superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorous acid, hydroxyl radical, and peroxynitrite, respectively [1–5]. Those selective yet general sensing strategies could be extended to fluorescein, rhodol, rhodamine, naphthalimide, and BODIPY fluorophores, thus HKSOX, HKPerox, HKOCl, HKOH, HKGreen/HKYellow series probes have been developed as a comprehensive toolbox to detect individual species with different excitation/emission and organelle colocalization. Moreover, the photophysical properties of those probes could be modulated by chemical modifications of heteroaromatic fluorophores [6,7]. We anticipate that the HK series probes could provide robust tools to investigate complex ROS/RNS crosstalk and signaling process with spatial-temporal precision.