title: Ultrabright organic dots with aggregation-induced emission characteristics for cell tracking.
abstract: Noninvasive fluorescence cell tracking provides critical information on the physiological displacement and translocation of actively migrating cells, which deepens our understanding of biomedical engineering, oncological research, stem cell transplantation and therapies. Non-viral fluorescent protein transfection based cell tracing has been widely used but with issues related to cell type-dependent expression, lagged readout, immunogenicity and mutagenesis. Alternative cell tracking methods are therefore desired to attain reliable, stable, and efficient labeling over a long time. In this work, we have successfully developed ultra-bright organic dots with aggregation-induced emission (AIE dots) and demonstrated their capabilities for cellular imaging and cell tracking. The AIE dots possess high fluorescence, super photostability, and excellent cellular retention and biocompatibility. As compared to commonly used pMAX-GFP plasmid labeling approach, the organic AIE dots showed excellent cell labeling on all tested human cell lines and superior tracing performance, which opens up new opportunities in the cell-based immunotherapies and other related biological researches.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore; Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117411, Singapore.
authors.forename: Guangxue
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Chor Yong
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Tay
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Qi Xiang
authors.initials: QX
authors.lastname: Chui
authors.affiliation: Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore 117602, Singapore.
authors.forename: Rongrong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore 117602, Singapore; Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, 117543, Singapore.
authors.forename: Nikodem
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tomczak
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Division of Biomedical Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China; SCUT-HKUST Joint Research Laboratory, Guangdong Innovative Research Team, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China. Electronic address: tangbenz@ust.hk.
authors.forename: Ben Zhong
authors.initials: BZ
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore. Electronic address: cheltwd@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: David Tai
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Leong
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore; Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore 117602, Singapore. Electronic address: cheliub@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D002460:Cell Line; D058948:Cell Tracking / Q000379:methods*; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D045663:Quantum Dots / Q000737:chemistry*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012996:Solutions; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence
chemical_list: D012996:Solutions; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins
keywords: Aggregation induced emission; Biological science; Cell tracing; Fluorescence imaging; Green fluorescent protein