Lipid Droplet-Targeting near-infrared carbon dots with High-Specificity Dual-Report function for diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma and evaluating its pharmacodynamics

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a metabolic disease with high mortality caused by abnormal deposition of lipid droplets (LDs). The number and distribution of LDs can effectively reflect the severity of HCC. Additionally, polarity change is also an important indicator for monitoring HCC. Therefore, using fluorescence imaging technology to accurately identify LDs is helpful for HCC diagnosis and treatment evaluation. To date, the study that can simultaneously monitor the polarity and spatiotemporal characteristics of LDs to diagnose HCC has not been reported yet. Herein, a novel LD-targeting near-infrared carbon dots (CDs) with dual-report function of determining the LDs polarity as well as presenting their spatial characteristics was developed. The high lipophilicity and solvatochromic effect of CDs endows it with the ability to image LDs with high-fidelity, so it can not only report the spatiotemporal characteristics of LDs including the number, size, and aggregation degree, but also determine their polarity variations. Therefore, the high-contrast fluorescence diagnosis of HCC was successfully realized by using dual-function CDs. Meanwhile, the CDs were further utilized to evaluate the efficacy of anticancer drugs with satisfactory performance. Overall, this CD-based LDs probe may provide a new perspective for the diagnosing of LDs-related diseases and screening of anticancer drugs.

Automated summary

This study developed a novel near-infrared carbon dots with dual-report function that accurately identifies the polarity and spatial characteristics of lipid droplets in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The carbon dots can report the number, size, aggregation degree, and polarity variations of lipid droplets using fluorescence imaging technology, enabling high-contrast fluorescence diagnosis of HCC and evaluation of anticancer drug efficacy.