Aggregation-Induced Emission
Luminogens with the Capability of Wide Color Tuning, Mitochondrial
and Bacterial Imaging, and Photodynamic Anticancer and Antibacterial
Therapy
posted on 2019-03-07, 00:00authored byNa Zhao, Pengfei Li, Jiabao Zhuang, Yanyan Liu, Yuxin Xiao, Ruilin Qin, Nan Li
Recently,
luminogens with the aggregation-induced emission characteristic (AIEgens)
have received much attention in the field of bioimaging and therapeutic
applications. However, the development of AIEgens that are derived
from the simple core skeleton with emission color tuning for imaging
and therapy is still a formidable challenge. To address this constraint,
we present a series of cationic AIEgens based on cyanopyridinium salts
(CP1–CP5). The AIEgens can be facilely prepared by varying
the aromatic electron donor while fixing the cyanopyridinium group
as the electron acceptor within a single benzene ring. The obtained
AIEgens possess wide color tunability, large Stokes shifts, and bright
emission in the condensed state. Due to their good biocompatibility
and cationic nature, these AIEgens can be utilized for multiple-color
imaging of intracellular mitochondria as well as Gram-negative and
Gram-positive bacteria. Importantly, these AIEgens exhibit remarkable
structure-dependent singlet-oxygen generation ability under white
light illumination (25 mW cm–2), and CP4 was optimized
to serve as an excellent photosensitizer for photodynamic anticancer
and antibacterial therapy.