Bioinspired design concept has been recognized as one of the most promising strategies for discovering new biomaterials. However, smart biomaterials that are of growing interests in biomedical field need biological processability to meet their emergent applications in vivo. Herein, a new bio-orthogonally deciphered approach has been demonstrated for modulating optical properties of nanomaterials in living systems. The self-assembled nanoemitters based on cyanine-pyrene molecule 1 with inert optical property are designed and prepared. The structure and optical feature of the nanoemitters 1 can be efficiently and reliably modulated by a unique bio-orthogonal mechanism with abundant glutathione (GSH) as an activator. As a result, the self-assembled nanoemitters 1 spontaneously exhibits binary emissions for high-performance tumor imaging in vivo. We believe that this bio-orthogonally deciphered strategy opens a new avenue for designing variable smart biomaterials or devices in biomedical applications.
Keywords: bio-orthogonal; nanoparticles; self-assembly; supramolecular; tumor.