Discovery of a highly selective fluorescent probe for hydrogen peroxide and its biocompatibility evaluation and bioimaging applications in cells and zebrafish.

As one of the most widely distributed reactive oxygen species in vivo, hydrogen peroxide plays divergent and important roles in cell growth, differentiation and aging. When the level of hydrogen peroxide in the body is abnormal, it will lead to genome mutation and induce irreversible oxidative modification of proteins, lipids and polysaccharides, resulting in cell death or even disease. Therefore, it is significant to develop a sensitive and specific probe for real-time detection of hydrogen peroxide in vivo. In this study, the response mechanism between hydrogen peroxide and probe QH was investigated by means of HRMS and the probe showed good optical properties and high selectivity to hydrogen peroxide. Note that the evaluating of probe biocompatibility resulted from cytotoxicity test, behavioral test, hepatotoxicity test, cardiotoxicity test, blood vessel toxicity test, immunotoxicity test and neurotoxicity test using cell and transgenic zebrafish models with more than 20 toxic indices. Furthermore, the detection performance of the probe for hydrogen peroxide was evaluated by multiple biological models and the probe was proved to be much essential for the monitoring of hydrogen peroxide in vivo.