Novel Hydrocyanine Probes for the Accurate Detection of Reactive Oxygen Species

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in numerous cell-signaling pathways. They have been implicated in over 150 diseases including cancer, arthritis, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, myocardial infarction and atherosclerosis. The need to understand the role of ROS in these processes is evidenced by the 80,000 publications in this field during the last five years alone. Recently, in a paper James D. Watson called among my most important work since the double helix, ,he posited a theory that links cancer progression in late stages of the disease to the presence of antioxidants and the role of ROS (Watson, J. Open Biol. 2013, 3, 120144). Despite the immense interest and importance of ROS research, there are no probes that combine reliability, sensitivity, and efficiency for detecting ROS in cell culture, ex vivo, and in vivo. No current commercially available probe can image ROS in vivo, which presents a significant impediment in understanding the role of ROS in th