MS. XUEFENG JIANG

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is common in hospital patients. Delayed diagnosis and treatment of AKI due to the lack of efficient early diagnosis is an important cause of its high mortality. While fluorescence imaging seems promising to non-intrusively interrogate AKI-related biomarkers, the low kidney contrast of many fluorophores conferred by their relatively low abundance of distribution in the kidney limits their application for AKI detection. Herein, we discovered a near-infrared fluorophore with inherent kidney-targeting ability. Based on this fluorophore, a fluorogenic probe (KNP-1) was developed by targeting peroxynitrite (ONOO- ), which is upregulated at the early onset of AKI. Notably, the upregulation of ONOO- can be observedat least 24 h earlier than the clinically popular sCr and BUN methods. These results highlight the applicability of this inherently tissue targeting-based strategy for designing probes with desirable imaging contrast.