Rational design of a lysosome-targeted fluorescent probe for monitoring the generation of hydroxyl radicals in ferroptosis pathways

Abstract

Ferroptosis is a newly discovered iron-dependent form of regulated cell death associated with high levels of hydroxyl radical (˙OH) production. Meanwhile, lysosome dysfunction has been shown to be one of the causes of ferroptosis. Although a variety of ˙OH-responsive fluorescent probes have been developed for detecting intracellular ˙OH in living cells, there are still only few lysosome-targeted probes to monitor the variation in lysosomal ˙OH levels during ferroptosis. Herein, we report a novel ˙OH-specific fluorescent probe HCy-Lyso, which is composed of the hydrocyanine and morpholine moiety. Upon treatment with ˙OH, its hydrocyanine unit was converted to the corresponding cyanine group, thus leading to a large π-conjugation extension of HCy-Lyso, accompanied by a significant fluorescence off–on response. Moreover, after reacting with ˙OH in an acidic environment, the protonation product of HCy-Lyso exhibits a higher fluorescence enhancement, which is suitable for detecting lysosomal ˙OH variation. HCy-Lyso has been utilized for imaging endogenous ˙OH in living cells under phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) stimuli and monitoring the changes in lysosomal ˙OH levels during ferroptosis. Thus, our study proposes a new strategy to design lysosome-targeted and ˙OH-responsive fluorescent probes to investigate the relationship between lysosomes and ferroptosis.