Novel luminescent probes of lanthanide complexes for sensing of biomolecules.

Luminescent lanthanide probes are emerging as powerful tools inin vitro labelling of biomolecules and nanoparticles for monitoring of bioassays in diagnostics or drug discovery.

Use of sensitizing chromophores or antennas as ligands in a lanthanide complex allows increasing luminescence intensity of the lanthanide ion. However, its current application is limited due to the difficulty to label the biomolecule in an easy way.

The authors have developed two families of antenna ligands able to bind efficiently to biomolecules and sensitize luminescence emission of lanthanide cations, especially Europium III cations (Eu3+) and Terbium III (Tb3+).

Assays performed with different peptides and proteins labelled with lanthanide complexes using the developed antennas showed between 2,000 and 12,000 fold luminescence increase with Tb3+ complexes and between 8,000 and 68,000 fold with Eu3+ complexes.

Similarly, nanoparticles labelled with these lanthanide complexes have been used efficiently for tumour cells imaging.

ADVANTAGES AND BENEFITS

Easy and efficient generation of luminescent lanthanide sensors using novel antennas able to increase the intensity of the lanthanide’s fluorescence emission once bonded to the target.

Effective implementation in the luminescent labelling of biomolecules and nanoparticlesin vitro.

Easy target labelling both in solution and in solid phase.

Advantages over organic fluorophores and fluorescent protein are:

• Long luminescence lifetime (μs-ms) erasing interferences by autofluorescence of the biological systems and increasing signal-to- noise ratio, hence sensitivity.
• Sharp emission peaks with narrow bandwidth that do not overlap.
• Large Stokes’ shift avoiding self-absorption.

​They allow simultaneous use of different lanthanide probes to detect several targets (multichannel detection).