Fungal detection and elimination based on AIEgens

Abstract

Fungi are closely related to people's production and living. It is very crucial to achieve the accurate detection and effective elimination of fungi in the reasonable utilization of fungi and the efficient treatment of fungi-infected diseases. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogens (AIEgens), which can overcome the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect and emit bright emission in aggregated states, have great potential in imaging, detection and therapy with high photostability and abundant generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In this review, we summarized relevant studies on fungal detection and elimination that utilize AIEgens. In fungal detection, some works involving AIEgens in fungal viability evaluation, imaging, activity assessment, discrimination and quantification were described. In fungal elimination, several works in fungal killing due to dark toxicity or phototoxicity of AIEgens in vitro were represented, and some works in fungal elimination and treatment of superficial fungal infection in vivo relying on phototoxicity of AIEgens were depicted. At the end of the review, we conclude the structural features of AIEgens for binding to fungi and present the existing challenges in this field.