Acid-Promoted D-A-D Type Far-Red Fluorescent Probe with High Photostability for Lysosomal Nitric Oxide Imaging

To accurately monitor the variations of lysosomal nitric oxide (NO) under physiological condition remains a great challenge for understanding the biological function of NO. Herein, we developed a new chemotype probe, namely, MBTD, for acid-promoted and far-red fluorescence imaging of lysosomal NO in vitro and ex vivo. MBTD was rationally designed by incorporating o-phenylenediamino (OPD) moiety into the donor–acceptor–donor (D-A-D) type fluorophore based on a dual intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) mechanism. Compared to previously reported OPD-based NO probes, MBTD displays several distinct advantages including large stroke shift, huge on–off ratio with minimal autofluorescence, and high NO specificity. Particularly, MBTD exhibits an acid-promoted response to NO with high acid tolerance, which greatly improves the spatial resolution to lysosomal NO by excluding the background noise from other nonacidic organelles. Furthermore, MBTD displayed much longer-lived and more stable fluorescence emission in comparison with the commercialized NO probe. MBTD was employed for ratiometric examination of the exogenous or endogenous NO of macrophages. More importantly, MBTD was able to detect the variation of lysosomal NO level in an acute liver injury mouse model ex vivo, implying the potential of MBTD for real-time monitoring the therapeutic efficacy of drug candidates for the treatment of acute liver injury. MBTD as a novel type of NO probe might open a new avenue for precisely sensing lysosomal NO-related pathological and therapeutic process.