Great efforts have gone into improving the photophysical and photochemical properties of NIR dyes. Recently, Professor Weihong Zhu`s group has achieved an important breakthrough on near-infrared fluorescent bioimaging research. A paper of“Far-Red and Near-IR AIE-Active Fluorescent Organic Nanoprobes with Enhanced Tumor-Targeting Efficacy : Shape-Specific Effects”was published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201501478/abstract). This work was completed by Andong Shao and Dr. Zhiqian Guo, and greatly assisted by Prof. Ping Shi from ECUST. 
    In this work, the unique molecular design strategy is reported by tailoring aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active organic molecules to realize preferable far-red and NIR fluorescence, well-controlled morphology from rod-like to spherical, as well as tumor targeted bioimaging. The shape-tailored organic quinoline-malononitrile (QM) nanoprobes are biocompatible, and highly desirable for cell tracking applications. Impressively, the spherical shape of QM-5 nanoaggregates exhibits excellent tumor-targeted bioimaging performance after intravenously injection into mice, but not the rod-like aggregates of QM-2. These results will open new opportunities for constructing organic AIE-active NIR nanoprobes in cancer therapeutics and diagnostics.

    This work was supported by National 973 Program (2013CB733700), NSFC for Creative Research Groups (21421004) and Distinguished Young Scholars (21325625), NSFC/China, Oriental Scholarship, Shanghai Pujiang Program (13PJD010), Fok Ying Tong Education Foundation (142014), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (222201313010) and Catalysis and Sensing for our Environment (CASE) network.