Polymer, Vol.133, 151-159, 2017
AIE-active florescent polymers: The design, synthesis and the cell imaging application
Fluorescence imaging, especially specific organelle imaging, has become a significant technology to comprehending cell transplantation, migration, division, fusion, and lysis. In this paper, we designed and synthesized a water soluble and fluorescent polymer named as Poly(AA-TPA-d), which was pH-responsive by the fluorescence channel due to the presence of poly acrylic acid as the polymer backbone. The research results demonstrated that Poly(AA-TPA-d) exhibits novel aggregation-inducedemission (AIE) property. Additionally, due to the hydrogen bond formation and C=O center dot center dot center dot pi interactions between methyl acrylate groups, Poly(AA-TPA-d) was of excellent hydrogel formation ability. Moreover, Poly(AA-TPA-d) displayed good bio-compatibility with the living MPC5 cells and highly specific cytoplasm-targeting ability by MTT assay and cell staining experiment respectively. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.