Intracellular transglutaminase-catalyzed polymerization and assembly for bioimaging of hypoxic neuroblastoma cells.

Hypoxia is an indicative feature of human neuroblastoma solid tumor. Bioimaging of hypoxic neuroblastoma cells will be beneficial for tracing and locating the tumor in vivo. In this work, we developed a hypoxic neuroblastoma cell imaging probe based on the mechanism of transglutaminase 2 (TG2)-catalyzed polymerization of fluorescence molecule-labeled peptide monomers and intracellular self-assembly of polymerized elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) specifically for hypoxic neuroblastoma cells.