Leveraging the Aminothiol-Specific Phosphorogenic Response of Iridium(III) Thioester Complexes for the Development of Intracellular Sensors and Cancer Phototherapeutics

generation efficiencies. These conjugates retained the tumor-targeting capabilities of the original peptides and showed high specificity for MDA-MB-231 cells compared to MCF-7 and HEK-293 cells, resulting in selective photocytotoxicity toward this triple-negative breast cancer cell line. We believe that our design approach will inspire the development of novel luminogenic thioester-based reagents for bioconjugation, bioimaging, and therapeutic applications.