Discriminating normal and inflammatory models by viscosity changes with a mitochondria-targetable fluorescent probe

Intracellular viscosity abnormalities can lead to diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. In this work, we developed a mitochondria-targetable fluorescent probe (EIMV) for discriminating normal and inflammatory models by viscosity changes. It was found that EIMV showed excellent properties, including high photostability, low cytotoxicity, red emission and favorable biocompatibility. In view of these unique features, this probe could successfully identify normal and cancer cells via viscosity changes. Furthermore, the EIMV probe successfully identified zebrafish with different viscosities by the same method. Moreover, EIMV exhibited different fluorescence signals in normal and inflammatory mice due to changes in viscosity. Therefore, the probe provides a new method to study the relationship between diseases and viscosity in the fields of biology and medicine.