Fluorescentchemical probes for accurate tumor diagnosis and targeting therapy

Min Gao^ad,Fabiao Yu^ab*,Changjun Lv^b, Jaebum Choo^c*, and LingxinChen^ab*

^a.Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processesand Ecological Remediation, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, ChineseAcademy of Sciences, Yantai 264003, China.

^b. Department of Respiratory Medicine, AffiliatedHospital of Binzhou Medical University, Binzhou 256603, China.

^c.Department of Bionano Engineering, HanyangUniversity, Ansan 426-791, South Korea.

^d.University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.

E-mails: fbyu@yic.ac.cn, jbchoo@hanyang.ac.kr,lxchen@yic.ac.cn

Surgicalresection of solid tumors is currently the gold standard and preferredtherapeutic strategy for cancer. Chemotherapy drugs also make a significantcontribution by inhibiting the rapid growth of tumor cells and these twoapproaches are often combined to enhance treatment efficacy. However, surgeryand chemotherapy inevitably lead to severe sideeffects and high systemic toxicity, which in turn results in poor prognosis.Precision medicine has promoted the development of treatment modalities thatare developed to specifically target and kill tumor cells. Advances in in vivo medical imaging for visualizingtumor lesions can aid diagnosis, facilitate surgical resection, investigatetherapeutic efficacy, and improve prognosis. In particular, the modality offluorescence imaging has high specificity and sensitivity and has been utilizedfor medical imaging. Therefore, there are great opportunities for chemists andphysicians to conceive, synthesize, and exploit new chemical probes that canimage tumors and release chemotherapy drugs invivo. This review focuses on small molecular ligand–targeted fluorescentimaging probes and fluorescent theranostics, including their design strategiesand applications in clinical tumor treatment. The progress in chemical probesdescribed here suggests that fluorescence imaging is a vital and rapidlydeveloping field for interventional surgical imaging, as well as tumordiagnosis and therapy.

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2017, Advance Article DOI:10.1039/C6CS00908E  

Received  13 Dec 2016, First published online   20 Mar 2017
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/cs/c6cs00908e/unauth#!divAbstract