Chimie organique

On the road for more efficient biocompatible two-photon excitable fluorophores

Publié le - Chemistry - A European Journal

Auteurs : Marie Auvray, Frédéric Bolze, Delphine Naud-Martin, Matthieu Poulain, Margaux Bossuat, Gilles Clavier, Florence Mahuteau-Betzer

Red to NIR absorption and emission wavelengths are key requirements for intravital bioimaging. One of the way to reach such excitation wavelengths is to use two-photon excitation. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of two-photon excitable fluorophores that are both efficient and biocompatible. Thus, we design a series of biocompatible quadrupolar dyes in order to study their ability to be used for live-cell imaging, and in particular for two-photon microscopy. Hence, we report the synthesis of 5 probes based on different donor cores (phenoxazine, acridane, phenazasiline and phenothiazine) and the study of their linear and non-linear photophysical properties. TD-DFT calculations were performed and were able to highlight the structure-property relationship of this series. All these studies highlight the great potential of three of these biocompatible dyes for two-Photon microscopy, as they both exhibit high two-photon cross-sections (up to 3 650 GM) and emit orange to red light. This potential was confirmed through live-cell two-photon microscopy experiments, leading to images with very high brightness and contrast.