Advances in activatable small-molecule fluorescent probes for recognizing cisplatin and related biomolecules during cisplatin treatment

Abstract

Platinum (Pt) based chemotherapeutic drugs, like cisplatin, are widely used as anti-tumor agents for various malignancies. As a standard therapeutic option, cisplatin exhibits outstanding therapeutic efficiency through multiple mechanisms, which has been used clinically for more than four decades. However, the adverse effects and chemoresistance of cisplatin treatment has gradually emerged, being a major obstacle during battling cancer process. In this review, we mainly discuss the design concepts, activation principle and specific applications of these probes for detecting cisplatin, as well as the various biomarkers that may be produced after uptake of cisplatin, including reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive sulfur species (RSS), related enzymes and others. Besides, we also analyze the bottlenecks encountered by reported fluorescent probes and propose new strategies to address these challenges. We hope our summary will contribute to the personalized administration of cisplatin in clinical practice and develop new strategies in next generation drug designs.