A Cost-Effective Way to Produce Gram-Scale ¹⁸O‑Labeled Aromatic Aldehydes

Obtaining 18O-labeled organic substances is of great research importance and also an extremely challenging work. In this work, depending on the reversed Knoevenagel reaction, 18O-labeled aromatic aldehydes (3a–3x) are successfully obtained with high total yields (52–72%) and sufficient 18O abundance (90.90–96.09%)

AIE-Active Tetraphenylethylene Cross-Linked <i>N</i>‑Isopropylacrylamide Polymer: A Long-Term Fluorescent Cellular Tracker

There is a great demand to understand cell transplantation, migration, division, fusion, and lysis. Correspondingly, illuminant object-labeled bioprobes have been employed as long-term cellular tracers, which could provide valuable insights into detecting these biological processes. In this work, we designed and synthesized a fluorescent polymer, which was comprised of hydrophilic <i>N</i>-isopropylacrylamide polymers as matrix and a hydrophobic tetraphenylethene (TPE) unit as AIE-active cross-linkers (DDBV). It was found that when the feed molar ratio of <i>N</i>-isopropylacrylamides to cross-linkers was 22:1, the produced polymers demonstrated the desirable LCST at 37.5 °C. And also, the temperature sensitivity of polymers could induce phase transfer within a narrow window (32–38 °C). Meanwhile, phase transfer was able to lead the florescent response. And thus, we concluded that two responses occur when one stimulus is input. Therefore, the new cross-linker of DDBV rendered a new performance from PNIPAm and a new chance to create new materials. Moreover, the resulted polymers demonstrated very good biocompatibility with living A549 human lung adenocarcinoma cells and L929 mouse fibroblast cells, respectively. Both of these cells retained very active viabilities in the concentration range of 7.8–125 μL/mg of polymers. Notably, P­[(NIPAm)₂₂–(DDBV)₁] (P6) could be readily internalized by living cells with a noninvasive manner. The cellular staining by the fluorescent polymer is so indelible that it enables cell tracing for at least 10 passages

Positively Charged Hyperbranched Polymers with Tunable Fluorescence and Cell Imaging Application

Fluorescence-tunable materials are becoming increasingly attractive because of their potential applications in optics, electronics, and biomedical technology. Herein, a multicolor molecular pixel system is realized using a simple copolymerization method. Bleeding of two complementary colors from blue and yellow fluorescence segments reproduced serious multicolor fluorescence materials. Interestingly, the emission colors of the polymers can be fine-tuned in the solid state, solution phase, and in hydrogel state. More importantly, the positive fluorescent polymers exhibited cell-membrane permeable ability and were found to accumulate on the cell nucleus, exhibiting remarkable selectivity to give bright fluorescence. The DNA/RNA selectivity experiments in vitro and in vivo verified that [tris­(4-(pyridin-4-yl)­phenyl)­amine]-[1,8-dibromooctane] has prominent selectivity to DNA over RNA inside cells