BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Bright idea in cancer

January 8, 2009 8:00 AM UTC

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and the NIH's National Cancer Institute have developed pH-sensitive fluorescent probes that can selectively label viable cancer cells in vivo.1 These probes may be useful as visualization aids in surgery and imaging procedures as well as in drug efficacy studies.

In a paper published in Nature Medicine, researchers described boron-dipyrromethene-based probes conjugated to a mAb targeting cell surface proteins. Following internalization, the conjugated probes become activated only within the acidic microenvironment of lysosomes-a hallmark of viable cells. Damaged or dying cells cannot maintain a low-pH lysosomal microenvironment, and probes within such cells will not activate...