An activatable reporter for fluorescence imaging drug-induced liver injury in diverse cell lines and in vivo

Peroxynitrite (ONOO-) is considered to be an important indicator of the early stage of drug-induced liver injury (DILI). Therefore, the establishment of a reliable ONOO- detection method is of great significance for the early prediction and diagnosis of DILI. In this paper, a red fluorescence probe BDP-PN based on BODIPY dye was constructed studiously for large signal-to-noise ratio, highly selective and sensitive recognition of ONOO- in vitro. Furthermore, the probe has been successfully used to image exogenous and endogenous ONOO(- )in different cell lines. More importantly, in the APAP-induced liver injury model of diverse cell lines and mice, BDP-PN not only could monitor the up-regulated expression of ONOO-, but also could evaluate the remediation of NAC. In addition, BDP-PN could distinguish cancer cells from normal cells by the different levels of ONOO- expression. All the results demonstrated the wider universality of probe, which may as a promising tool to diagnose drug induced liver injury by means of monitoring fluctuation of ONOO-.

Automated summary

In this study, a reliable fluorescence probe BDP-PN was constructed for the detection and imaging of ONOO-, showing potential applications in drug-induced liver injury and cancer cell diagnosis.