Carbon monoxide activatable near-infrared fluorescent probe to explore drug-induced liver injury and protective effect of TCMs components.

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is increasingly considered as a significant cause of acute liver failure, and poses serious threat to human health. Given that carbon monoxide (CO) has been recognized as a crucial gasotransmitter which the dysregulated expression level is intimately correlated with the occurrence and progression of DILI. Therefore, the development of a highly effective probe capable of responding to CO holds great potential for the accurately diagnosis of DILI and the direct assessment of the hepatoprotective efficacy of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). In this work, a new CO-activatable NIR fluorescent probe (BMC-CO) was rationally constructed, which not only exhibits significantly improved specificity and sensitivity (LOD = 44 nM) and a large Stokes shift of 130 nm, but also enables rapid CO detection within 3 min. Furthermore, this probe can be effectively applied to evaluate the therapeutic effects of TCMs components against DILI both in cells and in vivo. Thus, BMC-CO holds great promise as a valuable tool for the early diagnosis of DILI and for the screening of effective drug candidates.