Carbon–Dipyrromethenes: Bright Cationic Fluorescent Dyes and Potential Application in Revealing Cellular Trafficking of Mitochondrial Glutathione Conjugates

Boron–dipyrromethenes (Bodipys), since first reported in 1968, have emerged as a fascinating class of dyes in the past few decades due to their excellent photophysical properties including bright fluorescence, narrow emission bandwidth, resistance to photobleaching, and environment insensitivity. However, typical Bodipys are highly lipophilic, which often results in nonfluorescent aggregates in aqueous solution and also severely limits their bioavailability to cells and tissues. In this work, based on a simple one-atom B → C replacement in the Bodipy scaffold, we present a new class of carbon–dipyrromethenes (Cardipys for short) fluorescent dyes with tunable emission wavelengths covering the visible and near-infrared regions. These Cardipys not only retain the excellent photophysical properties of conventional Bodipys but also show improved water solubility and photostability due to their cationic character. Moreover, the cationic character also makes them extremely easy to penetrate the cell membrane and specifically accumulate into mitochondria without resorting to any mitochondria-targeted groups. Interestingly, several Cardipys bearing active styryl groups could serve as fluorescent indicators to map cellular trafficking of the glutathione conjugates produced within mitochondria under the catalysis of glutathione S-transferase (GST), thus showing potential in either exploring the detoxification mechanism of the mitochondrial GST/GSH system or evaluating the drug resistance of cancer cells that is closely related with GST activity.