One-pot synthesis of a hydrogen peroxide-selective fluorogenic probe and its application in Parkinson's disease in vitro and vivo models

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide and the abnormal level of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the dopaminergic neurons is strongly implicated in the progression of PD. Turn-on fluorogenic probes have been used to detect various biomarkers such as H2O2 due to their high sensitivity and low background fluorescence. However, the complicated design and synthesis of fluorogenic probes limit the development of such excellent biochemical tools. Herein, we proposed a multicomponent one-pot reaction system using POCl3 as the core and by changing specific receptor groups, different phosphate ester-based fluorogenic probes could be assembled to detect various target analytes. Based on this platform, we synthesized a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) probe UFPS-1 that is able to selectively and sensitively detect H2O2 with near-red emission and large Stokes shift. More importantly, UFPS-1 monitored H2O2 in a quantitative manner in both in vitro and in vivo PD models, suggesting that UFPS-1 could potentially be utilized for the diagnosis of PD.