Imaging and detection of sulfite in acute liver injury with a novel quinoxaline-based fluorescent probe

Herein, a novel fluorescent probe HZY was developed for monitoring the sulfite (SO₃^2-) dynamics. For the first time, the SO₃^2- triggered implement was applied in the acute liver injury (ALI) model. The levulinate was selected to achieve the specific and relatively steady recognition reaction. With the addition of SO₃^2-, the fluorescence response of HZY exhibited a large Stokes shift of 110 nm under the 380 nm excitation. The merits included high selectivity under various pH conditions. Compared with the reported fluorescent probes for sulfite, HZY indicated above-moderate performances including remarkable and rapid response (40 folds, within 15 min), and high sensitivity (limit of detection = 0.21 μM). Further, HZY could visualize the exogenous and endogenous SO₃^2- level in living cells. Moreover, HZY could gauge the changing levels of SO₃^2- in three types (induced by CCl₄, APAP, and alcohol) of ALI models. Both in vivo imaging and depth-of-penetration fluorescence imaging demonstrated that HZY could characterize the developmental and therapeutic status during the liver injury process by measuring the dynamic of SO₃^2-. The successful implementation of this project would promote the accurate in-situ detection of SO₃^2- in liver injury, which was expected to guide the pre-clinical diagnosis and clinical practice.