The synthesis and evaluation of two cathepsin S-specific probes is described. For long-term retention of the probe at the target site and a high signal-to-noise ratio, we introduced a lipidation approach via the simple attachment of palmitoic acid to the reporter. After cathepsin S-specific cleavage in cultured cells and in a grafted tumor mouse model, fluorescence increased owing to dequenching and we observed an intracellular accumulation of the fluorescence in the target tissue. The lipidated probe provided a prolonged and strongly fluorescent signal in tumors when compared to the very similar non-lipidated probe, demonstrating that non-invasive tumor identification is feasable. The homing principle by probe lipidation might also work for selective administration of cytotoxic compounds to specifically reduce tumor mass.
Keywords: FRET; fluorescence probes; homing; lipidation; tumor diagnosis.
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.