Issue 10, 2023

Binding affinity-based intracellular drug detection enabled by a unimolecular cucurbit[7]uril-dye conjugate

Abstract

Label-free fluorescence-based chemosensing has been increasingly brought into focus due to its simplicity and high sensitivity for intracellular monitoring of molecules. Currently used methods, such as conventional indicator displacement assays (IDAs), pose limitations related to dissociation upon dilution, random diffusion of the released indicators, and high sensitivity to interference by agents from the ambient cellular environment (e.g., salts, enzymes, and proteins). Herein we report a potentially widely applicable strategy to overcome the limitations of conventional IDAs by employing a macrocyclic cucurbit[7]uril (CB7) host covalently coupled to a nitrobenzoxadiazole (NBD) fluorescent dye (CB7-NBD conjugate). As a proof of concept, we demonstrated that the CB7-NBD unimolecular conjugate responded to various target analytes even in the complex live cell system. Moreover, the sensing system was compatible with fluorescence imaging, fluorescence-assisted cell sorting (FACS), and fluorescence spectrometry with a microplate reader. These experiments demonstrated an application of covalently bound unimolecular CB7-NBD conjugate as a sensor for detecting diverse analytes in the intracellular compartment of live cells.

Graphical abstract: Binding affinity-based intracellular drug detection enabled by a unimolecular cucurbit[7]uril-dye conjugate

Supplementary files

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Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
20 Jul 2023
Accepted
29 Aug 2023
First published
07 Sep 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Chem. Biol., 2023,4, 760-764

Binding affinity-based intracellular drug detection enabled by a unimolecular cucurbit[7]uril-dye conjugate

Y. Liu, C. Hu, J. A. Serna, F. Biedermann and P. A. Levkin, RSC Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 760 DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00131H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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