Porphyrin-based fluorescent probes for imaging mitochondria in living cells

Porphyrins are well known photosensitizers for clinical applications for cancers. Herein, a series of porphyrin derivatives NTP1-3, , which designed as porphyrin conjugated with pyridinium ion and various number of triethylene glycol tails, were synthesized for targeting mitochondria. Solution based experiments show that the probes exhibit a minimal differences of photophysical properties between each probes. When the probes applied into the cancer cells, NTP2 entered inside of the cells and accumulated inside of the mitochondria in cells with a most efficiency, confirmed with co-staining experiment of mitochondria selective rhodamine dye, showing great potential as fluorescent imaging probes. Furthermore, results shows that NTP series probes can be functioned as photodynamic therapy(PDT) agent with red laser light irradiation experiment.