Fabrication and biological imaging application of AIE-active luminescent starch based nanoprobes

Fabrication of water dispersible, biocompatible and ultrabright luminescent polymeric nanoprobes (LPNs) has been the subject of great research interest. Although a number of LPNs have been fabricated previously through different strategies, the preparation of luminescent carbohydrate polymers with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characterstic has received only limited attention. In this work, we reported for the first time that AIE-active luminescent starch can be facilely fabricated via mixing the aldehyde-contained AIE dye 4-(1,2,2-triphenylvinyl) benzaldehyde (TPE-CHO) with carboxyl methyl starch sodium (CMS) and amino phenylboronic acid in a one-pot procedure, in which aminophenylboronic acid can serve as the linkage for conjugation of TPE-CHO and CMS. The final products (TPE-CMS LPNs) were characterized by a number of characterization techniques such as 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence Spectroscopy in detail. To examine their biomedical application potential, the biocompatibility as well as cell uptake behavior of TPE-CMS LPNs were further determined. We demonstrated that TPE-CMS LPNs showed high water dispersibility and strong fluorescence, well biocompatibility and efficient cell internalization behavior, making them promising candidates for various biomedical applications.