Developing Activatable Fluorescent Flavonoids for Vascular Imaging

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Developing Activatable Fluorescent Flavonoids for Vascular Imaging Project Summary/Abstract: During the imaging applications, fluorescent probes may be away from their binding targets, or in excess, thus giving background signals that affect the quality of imaging. Removal of the background signals often requires the post-staining washing to remove the excess dye, which could be a limiting factor for some applications. The proposed research seeks to improve the imaging process by developing flavonoid-based imaging reagents that give nearly no fluorescence in aqueous solution. However, the fluorescence of these dyes will be greatly enhanced during target-binding interaction, thus eliminating the need for post-staining washing step. When being applied to wild-type zebrafish, the developed dye can penetrate into the fish’s body and selectively target blood vessels, without using labor-intensive “dye injection”. Because zebrafish has become a favorite model organism for studying vertebrate development and various human diseases, discovery of these new imaging reagents for in vivo imaging could have large impact in the field of biological studies. The experimental study aims to discover and synthesize these probes that exhibit selective binding toward blood vessels. Discovery of such imaging reagents could lead to user-friendly probes for in vivo imaging of blood vessels, which could facilitate the related study by using zebrafish model.