Liver cancer is a malignant tumor with both high morbidity and mortality. The traditional treatment method is mainly based on hepatectomy for liver tumor. However, it is difficult to accurately distinguish the tumor tissue and its boundary with the naked eye and palpation, leading to an ambiguous resection result, finally causing high recurrence of liver cancer. Molecular fluorescent probes possessing numerous advantages, such as non-invasiveness, high sensitivity, and real-time imaging, have been extensively studied in liver cancer imaging and therapy. In this review, we briefly introduce the recent developments of always-on and activatable fluorescent probes in liver cancer imaging and therapy. Future potential challenges of the fluorescent probes for liver tumor imaging are also discussed. We expect that this review would improve the fluorescent probes development for real clinical application of liver cancer disease.
Keywords: activatable probe; bioimaging; biomaker; fluorescent probe; liver tumor.
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