Glutathione (GSH) is known to play a key role in the modulation of the redox environment in N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. Coumarin derivative 1 bearing cyanoacrylamide and ifenprodil moieties was synthesized and reported to monitor GSH near NMDA receptors. The cyanoacrylamide moiety allows probe 1 to monitor GSH reversibly at pH 7.4 and the ifenprodil group acts as a directing group for NMDA receptors. Two-photon fluorescence microscopy allows probe 1 to successfully sense endogenous GSH in neuronal cells and hippocampal tissues with excitation at 750 nm. Furthermore, the addition of H2O2 and GSH induced a decrease and an increase in fluorescence emission. Probe 1 can serve as a potential practical imaging tool to get important information on GSH in the brain.
This study was financially supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (No. 2021R1A6A1A10039823 for J. Yoon and No. 2016R1E1A1A02920873 for H. M. Kim). Xin Zhou acknowledges the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC. 21762045, 21911540466), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2019YQ12), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (219M652306), and Taishan Scholar Project (tsqn201812049) for supporting this work. This work was supported by the Korea Basic Science Institute (National Research Facilities and Equipment Center) grant funded by the Ministry of Education (2020R 1A 6C 101B194). High-resolution mass spectrometer analysis was performed on the Synapt G2-HDMS mass spectrometer (Waters, Manchester, U.K.), which was operated on MassLynx 4.1 software at KBSI (Korea Basic Science Institue, Ochang, Center of Research Equipment).
