An AIE Controlled “Off‐On” Cu2+‐Sensitive Probe for Early Detection of Renal Fibrosis

Abstract

AbstractEarly detection of renal fibrosis (RF) is very important given that it is irreversible when it progresses to the terminal stage. A key marker of RF pathogenesis is activation of myomyofibroblasts, and its targeted imaging may be a promising approach for early detection of RF, but no study has directly imaged activation of renal myomyofibroblasts. Cu2+ plays a major role in the fibrotic activity of myofibroblasts. Herein, inspired by that Cu2+ can complex with bovine serum albumin (BSA), BSA‐Ag2S quantum dots (QDs) with aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) property are synthesized. Then BSA‐Ag2S QDs are modified by chitosan (CS) with renal targeting and hyaluronic acid (HA) with myofibroblast targeting to obtain the AIE assay system (QDs@CS@HA). The system is simple to synthesize, and produces a rapid NIR fluorescence signal turn‐on response and a low detection limit of 75 × 10−9 m to Cu2+. In addition, cellular and animal experiments have shown that QDs@CS@HA has good biosafety and cell‐targeted imaging capability for RF. Based on the successful application of QDs@CS@HA and the mechanism of RF progression in early RF detection, it is expected that QDs@CS@HA may detect RF before the appearance of clinical symptoms.