Water-Soluble Near-Infrared Fluorescent Probes for Specific Detection of Monoamine Oxidase A in Living Biosystems
Jizhen Shang, Wen Shi, Xiaohua Li, Huimin Ma
Abstract
Monoamine oxidase (MAO) has two isomers (A and B), and the analysis of each one in biological samples is of great potential in studying MAO-related diseases. However, specific detection and imaging of MAO-A in cells and in vivo are still a great challenge at present due to the relative lack of suitable near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probes. In this work, two new NIR fluorescent probes, Rma-1 and Rma-2, have been developed for the analysis of MAO-A in living biosystems. The probes were designed by conjugating the specific structure of the MAO-A inhibitor to hemicyanine (an NIR fluorophore) directly or through a self-immolative linker. Both probes are water-soluble and showed selective and sensitive NIR (708 nm) responses toward MAO-A rather than MAO-B, of which probe Rma-1 with a self-immolative linker exhibited superior analytical performance with a detection limit of 4.5 ng/mL and 13-fold specificity for MAO-A over MAO-B. Further, probe Rma-1 has been successfully utilized to image the MAO-A activity in cells, zebrafish, and tumor-bearing mice, showing a promising prospect for MAO-A study in carcinoma.