Ultrafast discrimination of Gram-positive bacteria and highly efficient photodynamic antibacterial therapy using near-infrared photosensitizer with aggregation-induced emission characteristics

With the increase of bacterial infections in clinical practice, it becomes a public health problem which has aroused worldwide attention. Fluorescence imaging-guided photodynamic antibiosis has recently emerged as a promising protocol to solve this problem. However, developing a super powerful fluorescent material allowing facile preparation, long emission wavelength, rapid bacterial discrimination, washing-free staining, and high photodynamic antibacterial efficiency in a single entity, is highly desirable but remains challenging. In this study, we utilize for the first time a water-soluble near-infrared (NIR) emissive luminogen with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics, namely TTVP, for simultaneous dual applications of Gram-positive bacteria discrimination and photodynamic antibiosis. TTVP is able to selectively target Gram-positive bacteria over Gram-negative bacteria through a washing-free procedure after only 3 s incubation period, which is at least 100-fold shorter than those of previously reported protocols, implying ultrafast bacterial discrimination features. Meanwhile, TTVP exhibits extremely high reactive oxygen species generation efficiency, which is far superior to that of most popularly used photosensitizers, representing one of the best candidates for photodynamic antibiosis. In vitro and in vivo results demonstrate that TTVP provides extraordinary performance on photodynamic antibacterial therapy. This study thus offers a blueprint for the next generation of antibacterial materials.