华东理工大学杨有军教授团队开发了一类新型高灵敏希尔型pH荧光探针(PHX系列,Hill常数可达4.4-7.0,酸碱响应范围低至0.7 pH单位),如图1,弥补传统的Henderson - Hasselbalch型pH荧光探针监测病理相关的pH变化不显著的缺陷,可以用于癌症术中组织病理学分析 [1] 。
其中PHX6.8很容易渗透到细胞膜上,可直接绘制细胞内外的pH值及跨膜pH梯度。PHX6.8成功地用于快速和高对比度区分新鲜的未处理的癌细胞和正常细胞(如图2),因此在癌症手术的术中分析中具有广泛的潜力。
图2 (A) Macropathological images of resected mouse liver bearing a tumor. H&E histopathological images of fixed biopsies of tumor (B) and normal liver tissue (C), respectively. Confocal fluorescence images of a section of ex vivo mouse tumor (D) and normal liver tissue (E), stained with PHX2 (15 μM) for 15 min. Average fluorescence intensity of the nuclear, cytoplasm, and extracellular regions of tumor (F) and normal tissue (G) [1] .