Luminogens for biological applications

Abstract

A compound comprises a donor and an acceptor, wherein at least one donor (“D”) and at least one acceptor (“A”) may be arranged in an order of D-A; D-A-D; A-D-A; D-D-A-D-D; A-A-D-A-A; D-A-D-A-D; and A-D-A-D-A. The compound may be selected from the group consisting of: MTPE-TP, MTPE-TT, TPE-TPA-TT, PTZ-BT-TPA, NPB-TQ, TPE-TQ-A, MTPE-BTSe, DCDPP-2TPA, DCDPP-2TPA4M, DCDP-2TPA, DCDP-2TPA4M, TTS, ROpen-DTE-TPECM, and RClosed-DTE-TPECM. The compound may be used as a probe and may be functionalized with special targeted groups to image biological species. As non-limiting examples, the compound may be used in cellular cytoplasms or tissue imaging, blood vessel imaging, in vivo fluorescence imaging, brain vascular imaging, sentinel lymph node mapping, and tumor imaging, and the compound may be used as a photoacoustic agent.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.