Design, synthesis, and evaluation of a carboxylesterase detection probe with therapeutic effects.

In this study, a lysosomal targeting fluorescent probe recognition on CEs was designed and synthesized. The obtained probe BF-cur-Mor demonstrated excellent selectivity, sensitivity, pH-independence, and enzyme affinity towards CEs within 5 min. BF-cur-Mor could enable recognition of intracellular CEs and elucidate that the CEs content of different cancer cells follows the rule of HepG2 > HCT-116 > A549 > HeLa, and the CEs expression level of hepatoma cancer cells far exceeds that of normal hepatic cells, being in good agreement with the previous reports.