A NIR ratiometric fluorescent biosensor for sensitive detection and imaging of α‐L‐fucosidase in living cells and HCC tumor‐bearing mice

Detection and imaging of α-L-fucosidase (AFU) is great value to understand its roles in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumor early diagnosis, but ideal assays are still lacking. Herein, a near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent biosensor (α-Fuc-DCM) was elaborately designed synthesized for rapid ratiometric detection AFU activity cells HCC mouse models. In the presence AFU, this shows an enhancement NIR emission manner, which significantly improves accuracy with limit as low 4.8 mU/mL. Taking advantage these merits, lysosomes could be visualized using dual modality living cells. Furthermore, remarkable application monitoring endogenous tumor-bearing model also demonstrated bright fluorescence signal, indicated that clearly monitor liver stage. Importantly, α-Fuc-DCM probe can utilized detect serum from patients. This strategy offers promising system diagnosis studying cancers.