Mitochondria-targeted acridine-based dual-channel fluorescence chemosensor for detection of Sn and CrO ions in water and its application in discriminative detection of cancer cells.

The goal of the present work was to fabricate a new low-cost, easy-to-prepare, dual-channel fluorescence chemosensor comprised of acridine-diphenylacetyl moieties (NDA) to enable remarkable Sn detection in water and biological medium. The resulting NDA-Sn complex was utilized for the distinguished identification of CrO ions from other anions and biomolecules. These investigations involve the absorption, fluorescence, and electrochemical methods for the detection of Sn and CrO ions in pure water. The mechanism for NDA-mediated Sn detection was experimentally determined by FT-IR, NMR titrations, mass (ESI) analyses, and DFT calculations. The obtained results indicate that the NDA chemosensor possessed excellent performance characteristics including good water solubility and compatibility, quick response time (less than 10 s), high sensitivity (Sn = 0.268 μM and CrO = 0.160 μM), and selectivity against coexisting metals, anions, amino acids, and peptides. The chemosensor NDA induced negligible toxicity in live cells and was successfully utilized as a biomarker for the tracking of Sn in human normal and cancer cells. More importantly, NDA demonstrates distinguished recognition of Sn in human cancer cells rather than in normal live cells. Additionally, NDA was shown to act as a mitochondria-targeted probe in FaDu cells.