Three anionic conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs) with poly(p-phenylene ethynylene thiophene) backbones were designed and synthesized, among which PPET3-CO2Na showed greater molar extinction coefficient with red-shifted bands in both absorption and emission spectra compared to the well-studied PPE-CO2Na polymer. PPET3-CO2Na was thus chosen to construct CPE-based nanoparticles (CPNs) with cationic octaarginine (R8) peptide through electrostatic-interaction-induced self-assembly. Due to plasma membrane permeabilization and mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP) in early apoptotic cells, PPET3/R8 CPNs demonstrated excellent colocalization with MitoTracker Red in apoptotic cells instead of normal cells, which had potential application in cell imaging for early apoptosis recognition.
Keywords: apoptosis; cell imaging; conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs); conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs); self-assemble.