The off-on fluorophore increases tumor contrast for more efficient surgery

Polyamine levels in vivo can be recognized as a dynamic equilibrium between their anabolism and catabolism. Meanwhile, different levels of polyamines in body fluids caused by different cancers may result from the fact that different cancers have different metabolisms. Consequently, the detection of the fluctuating concentrations of polyamines in body fluids may help diagnose cancer or characterize different cancer types. We can light the cancer cell up by mean of fluorescence off-on system, which dramatically improve the detection of the cancer, thus cancer removal is easier to achieve. A visible-wavelength emissions turn-on fluorophore, with the arginine / lysine probes retained the 1, 8-naphthalic anhydride functional group, and the target com-pounds TPVN was obtained directly by means of Heck reactions. Based on our study, TPVN can present emission enhancement when binding with polyamine, which allows us to build a bright vesicle model to explain the distinct fluorescence image of TPVN in mitochondria, with high emission intensity, high emission contrast to cytosol and high photostability. Following these unique optical properties, we can observe the brightness of cancer cells are more apparent than normal cells. Consequently, we successfully distinguished cancer cells from normal cells by using polyamine probe in cell, tissue, and tumor assays.