LAUSR

Abstract α-Ketoglutaric acid (α-KA) is an important metabolic intermediate in tricarboxylic acid circle in our body. The mutations of isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) and isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 (IDH2), however, will lead to the transformation of α-KA into 2-hydroxyglutarate (2-HG), which is confirmed to closely related to actue myeloid leukemia (AML). Therefore it is of great significance to detect α-KA level changes in serum. In this paper, a fluorescent “off-on” probe CH for α-KA was designed based on naphthalimide fluorophore by introducing a hydrazine group for α-KA recognition and a long alkyl amino chain to enhance PET efficiency and water solubility. Cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) was added toform self-assembly micelles for accelerating the recognition process. CH shows a 28-fold fluorescence enhancement ((I − I0)/I0 at 550 nm) over other biological species by optimizing the chemical recognition process of CH with α-KA. Significantly, CH was successfully applied for thefluorescence discrimination of all kinds of blood cancer serum samples. This work would provide a potential method that is quick and convenient for sensing α-KA and may promote fluorescence detection in clinical diagnosis.