Development of an Activatable Fluorescent Probe for Prostate Cancer Imaging

Bioconjug Chem. 2017 Aug 16;28(8):2069-2076. doi: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.7b00233. Epub 2017 Jul 26.

Abstract

Technology to visualize small prostate cancers is urgently needed because of the difficulty of discriminating prostate cancer from normal tissue with the naked eye, and a fluorescence imaging method would be advantageous. Here, we describe the design and synthesis of a fluorogenic probe (Ac-KQLR-HMRG) that is activated by hepsin and matriptase (proteases over-expressed in prostate cancer). Ac-KQLR-HMRG exhibited significant turn-on fluorogenicity in the presence of hepsin (180-fold) and matriptase (80-fold) and allowed specific fluorescence imaging of various prostate cancer cell line in vitro. In addition, the probe enabled rapid imaging (within 1-10 min) of small prostate cancer nodules in mouse models of disseminated peritoneal tumor and orthotopic tumor.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Fluorescent Dyes / chemical synthesis
  • Fluorescent Dyes / chemistry*
  • Fluorescent Dyes / metabolism
  • Glutamic Acid / chemistry
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Optical Imaging / methods*
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Rhodamines / chemistry
  • Serine Endopeptidases / metabolism

Substances

  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Rhodamines
  • Glutamic Acid
  • Serine Endopeptidases
  • hepsin
  • matriptase