Modulation of assembly and disassembly of a new tetraphenylethene based nanosensor for highly selective detection of hyaluronidase

The development of nanoprobes with high sensitivity and specificity for tumor marker detection has gained increasing attention in biological applications. Here, we have designed and synthesized a novel 4,4',4”,4”'-(ethene-1,1,2,2-tetrayltetrakis(benzene-4,1-diyl))tetrakis (1-(4-bromobenzyl)pyridin-1-ium) bromide (TPE-4N+) based aggregation induced emission (AIE) fluorescent sensor and it gives rise to electrostatic adsorption towards hyaluronic acid (HA), resulting in an effective emission recovery in yellow-greenish region. In the presence of hyaluronidase (HAase), the enzymatic digestion between HA and HAase induces the fluorescence quenching and this “on-off” change has been analyzed by two consecutive linear equations. The low detection limit is determined to be 0.02 U/mL by quantitative evaluation and its practical application has been verified by detecting human urine samples. It is promising that this new approach can be utilized to study a wide variety of other depolymerization reactions.