Amphiphilic Fluorine-Containing Block Copolymers as Carriers for Hydrophobic PtTFPP for Dissolved Oxygen Sensing, Cell Respiration Monitoring and In Vivo Hypoxia Imaging with High Quantum Efficiency and Long Lifetime

New amphiphilic star or multi-arm block copolymers with different structures were synthesized for enabling the use of hydrophobic oxygen probe of platinum (II)-tetrakis (pentafluorophenyl) porphyrin (PtTFPP) for bioanalysis. The amphiphilic star polymers were prepared through the Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) method by using hydrophilic 4-arm polyethylene glycol (4-arm-PEG) as an initiator. Among the five block copolymers, P1 series (P1a, P1b, and P1c) and P3 possess fluorine-containing moieties to improve the oxygen sensitivity with its excellent capacity to dissolve and carry oxygen. A polymer P2 without fluorine units was also synthesized for comparison. The structure-property relationship was investigated. Under nitrogen atmosphere, high quantum efficiency of PtTFPP in fluorine-containing micelles could reach to 22% and long lifetime could reach to 76 μs. One kind of representative PtTFPP-containing micelles was used to detect the respiration of Escherichia coli (E. coli) JM109 and macrophage cell J774A.1 by a high throughput plate reader. In vivo hypoxic imaging of tumor-bearing mice was also achieved successfully. This study demonstrated that using well-designed fluoropolymers to load PtTFPP could achieve high oxygen sensing properties, and long lifetime, showing the great capability for further in vivo sensing and imaging.