Real-time fluorescent determination and biological imaging in living models via a butyrylcholinesterase-activated fluorescent probe

As a health-related biomarker, Butyrylcholinesterase ( BChE ) is widely distributed in various organs, tissues and shows significant over-expression in liver condition and neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, it remains great medical potential and challenging to developing an efficient chemical tool to monitor BChE in living models. Herein, two novel DCD-based fluorescent probes were designed and synthesized for monitoring BChE in vitro and vivo in a turn-on model. The refined probes DCD-P1 and DCD-P2 , not only possessed excellent discrimination between BChE and other analytes but also had high specificity, excellent cell membrane permeability and very short response time (7 min) for BChE . Moreover, DCD-P1 has been used to image BChE in living cells, brain tissues and mouse models successfully. Altogether, these results demonstrated that DCD-P1 may be a valuable tool for studying BChE activity in basic and clinical medical trails. • The refined probes DCD-P1 and DCD-P2 possessed excellent discrimination between BChE and other analytes. • DCD-P1 and DCD-P2 had high specificity, excellent cell membrane permeability and very short response time (77 min) for BChE. • DCD-P1 has been used to image BChE in hepatoma cells, braintissues and mouse models successfully. • The low cytotoxicity enabled DCD-P1 tracking BChE activityefficiently in complex physiological environment.