Specific lipid droplet imaging of atherosclerotic plaques and fatty liver using an imidazole-based fluorescence probe

Selective labelling and high-fidelity tracking of intracellular lipid droplets (LDs) can provide direct insight into pathological processes associated with abnormal lipid metabolism and therefore are of great value. We herein present a novel imidazole-based probe, TITM, which shows the aggregation-induced emission property and a remarkable fluorescence increase in sunflower oil than in water. With the advantages of good lipophilicity, biocompatibility, and LDs-targeted specificity, TITM allows the real-time and long-term tracking of dynamic LDs in living cells with high-resolution imaging performance. By establishment of LDs-related atherosclerosis (AS) and fatty liver mouse model, the imaging performance of TITM at pathological tissue level is well studied to show impressive selectivity and resolution.