Acridine-based dyes as high-performance near-infrared Raman reporter molecules for cell imaging

Jiasheng Du; Jinming Li; Yuzhan Li; Dong Wang; Hui Cao; Wanli He; Yang Zhou

doi:10.1039/d1ra08827k

Acridine-based dyes as high-performance near-infrared Raman reporter molecules for cell imaging

RSC Adv. 2022 Jan 25;12(6):3380-3385. doi: 10.1039/d1ra08827k. eCollection 2022 Jan 24.

Authors

Jiasheng Du¹, Jinming Li¹, Yuzhan Li¹, Dong Wang¹, Hui Cao¹, Wanli He¹, Yang Zhou¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Materials Physics and Chemistry, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing Beijing 100083 China.

Abstract

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoprobe has been proven to be a promising tool for near-infrared (NIR) biomedical imaging and diagnosis because of its high sensitivity and selectivity. However, the development of NIR SERS reporters has been a bottleneck impeding the preparation of ultrasensitive SERS probes. Herein, we report the design and synthesis of a series of SERS reporters in the NIR region based on 10-methylacridine (AD). The AD nanotags (gold nanostar-AD molecules-BSA, AuNS-AD-BSA) exhibit appreciable SERS signals and can be detected at as low as the sub-picomole level. The results of in vitro imaging experiments show that it can be used in live-cell delineation.