LAUSR

Most solid tumors are clinically treated using surgical resection, and the presence of residual tumor tissues at the surgical margins often determines tumor survival and recurrence. Herein, a hydrogel (AHB Gel) is developed for fluorescence-guided surgical resection. AHB Gel is constructed by tethering a polyacrylamide hydrogel and ATP-responsive aptamers together. It exhibits strong fluorescence under high ATP concentrations corresponding to the TME (100-500 μM) but shows little fluorescence at low ATP concentrations (10-100 nM) such as those in normal tissues. AHB Gel can rapidly (within 3 min) emit fluorescence after exposure to ATP, and the fluorescence signal only occurs at sites exposed to high ATP, resulting in a clear boundary between the ATP-high and ATP-low regions. In vivo, AHB Gel exhibits specific tumor-targeting capacity with no fluorescence response in normal tissue, providing clear tumor boundaries. In addition, AHB Gel has good storage stability, which is conducive to its future clinical application. In summary, AHB Gel is a novel tumor microenvironment-targeted DNA-hybrid hydrogel for ATP-based fluorescence imaging. It could enable the precise imaging of tumor tissues, showing promising application in fluorescence-guided surgeries in the future. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.