A water-soluble and specific BODIPY-based fluorescent probe for hypochlorite detection and cell imaging

Hypochlorite is one of the biologically important reactive oxygen species (ROS). Herein, a BODIPY-based fluorescent probe (BOD-OXIME) has been designed and synthesized for fluorescence detection of hypochlorite in aqueous media and imaging in live cells. Incorporating hydrophilic carboxyl and hydroxyl moieties makes the probe BOD-OXIME highly water soluble, thus making it operable in totally aqueous media. Besides, the probe can respond quickly toward hypochlorite in aqueous media. This new probe exhibits high selectivity and sensitivity towards ClO- over other reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). Furthermore, the probe BOD-OXIME can be successfully applied to image both exogenous and endogenous ClO- in living cells.