High-fidelity imaging probe for lysosomes and selective visualization of cancer cells and tissues

Lysosome is one of the most crucial organelles in living systems. Lysosomal viscosity is an important microenvironment parameter in lysosomes, which is closely related to the occurrence and development of many diseases, including cancer. To monitor the highly dynamic lysosomes and the lysosomal viscosity changes, we developed a versatile high-performance fluorescent probe DCMP in this work. DCMP shows stronger fluorescence under acidic conditions or in solutions with higher viscosity, especially with high sensitivity to the change of viscosity. More importantly, DCMP can use a low dose (100 nM) and can target lysosomes and image lysosomes with high signal-to-noise ratio and high fidelity. It can also track the lysosomal motility and viscosity changes in real-time, and effectively monitor the interaction between lysosomes and damaged organelles. We also found that DCMP can be successfully used to selectively and sensitively light up cancer cells and cancer tissues. All the results show that this new probe has great potential not only in lysosomal high-fidelity imaging, but also in cancer detection.