Please cite this article in press as: Qi et al., Boosting Fluorescence-Photoacoustic-Raman Properties in One Fluorophore for Precise Cancer Sur-
not that satisfied.14–17 Besides, Raman imaging is a complementary optical imaging
technique, featuring a cell-silent region (1,800–2,800 cmÀ1), which permits high-
contrast imaging with zero interference of biological background and thus holds
great potential for precise intraoperative inspection of residual tumors.18–20 As a
consequence, the combined advantages of fluorescence, PA, and Raman imaging
modalities decidedly promote the cancer surgical outcomes, which calls for highly
efficient fluorescence-PA-Raman triple-modality imaging agents.
At present, the most commonly used strategy for preparing multi-modality imaging
agents is to combine various components into one platform (all-in-one strategy) to
make use of their respective functions.21–25 Although effective, this method is hin-
dered by the complicated composition, reduced reproducibility and uncertain
pharmacokinetics, hence less accessible for clinical translation.26,27 Alternatively,
one-for-all organic agents with multiple imaging capacities in one molecule have
received more attention due to the lower complicity, simpler preparation, defined
structure, and far better reproducibility than the all-in-one agents.28,29 To our
knowledge, however, one-for-all organic agents with simultaneous fluorescence,
PA, and Raman imaging capabilities have been scarcely reported since it is consid-
erably hard to develop a molecular guideline to enable and boost every optical im-
aging efficacy at the same time. All the three imaging modalities stem from external
light excitation, e.g., fluorescence and PA are associated with the radiative and
nonradiative decay pathways from the excited state to the ground state, respec-
tively, while Raman signal originates from the relaxation of virtual energy state
(Scheme S1). The radiative and nonradiative pathways are expected to be greatly
impacted by the molecular motions (e.g., rotation, vibration, and twisting) that
could consume the excited-state energy, and Raman signal is a kind of molecular
vibration and rotation.18,30 These processes are competitive to each other, so it
is really difficult to simultaneously boost them in one organic molecule. Since the
aforementioned three optical imaging capacities and the corresponding photo-
physical processes are closely related to intramolecular motions, we wonder
whether organic molecules with rotation and vibration units can serve as a high-per-
1Department of Chemistry, The Hong Kong
Branch of Chinese National Engineering
forming fluorescence-PA-Raman triple-modality imaging agent, which has never
been explored before.
Research Center for Tissue Restoration and
Reconstruction, Institute for Advanced Study, and
Department of Chemical and Biological
Engineering, The Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay,
Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Molecular motions that play a pivotal role in determining many fundamental
physical and chemical processes hold stupendous potential for advancing the
biomedical field, as controllability and utilization of dynamic molecular motions
can lead to functional or smart materials with accurately tunable properties,
benefiting to precision medicine and personalized theranostics.31–33 For example,
our recent studies about the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogens
clearly demonstrate that intramolecular motions contribute greatly to the photo-
physical energy dissipation pathways and that restriction of intramolecular mo-
tions significantly promotes fluorescence in the aggregates.34–36 However, so
far, there have been few reports on the design of multi-functional bioagents
for precision medicine by fully taking advantage of active intramolecular motion
after light absorption, as it is indeed challenging to command and unify micro-
cosmic molecular dynamic behaviors to determine macroscopic biomedical
function and optimize the efficacy. This motivates us to develop advanced optical
bioprobes with biomedical effectiveness not achievable by currently available
ones.
2State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical
Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials,
Ministry of Education, and College of Life
Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
3College of Chemistry, Research Center for
Analytical Sciences, State Key Laboratory of
Medicinal Chemical Biology, and Tianjin Key
Laboratory of Molecular Recognition and
Biosensing, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071,
China
4Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission,
SCUT-HKUST Joint Research Institute, State Key
Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and
Devices, South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou 510640, China
5These authors contributed equally
6Lead Contact
In this contribution, we report for the first time that boosted fluorescence, PA,
and Raman properties can be integrated into one organic fluorophore, in which
2
Chem 5, 1–21, October 10, 2019