早期癌症诊断方法的开发十分重要，因为及早诊断癌症对于防止癌细胞扩散和提高患者生存率至关重要。近期研究表明，癌细胞膜的极性低于正常细胞膜，为细胞膜水平的癌症诊断提供了新的方法。我们在此开发了一种高灵敏度的细胞膜极性探针（Cal-M），用于早期癌症诊断。该探针具有低细胞毒性、良好的光稳定性、近红外（NIR）荧光发射（>700 nm）能力、大的斯托克斯偏移、对极性具有高灵敏度、优异的细胞膜定位表现以及选择性照亮癌细胞的能力。使用该探针染色，癌细胞的荧光强度约为正常细胞的63倍，表明Cal-M具有优异的灵敏度和选择性。该探针还成功用于检测癌细胞膜上的极性变化并在小鼠体内选择性可视化肿瘤。值得注意的是，该探针能够以1.37 mm3的小尺寸灵敏地可视化肿瘤，表明Cal-M在早期肿瘤诊断方面具有潜力。版权所有 ©2023 Elsevier B.V. 保留所有权利。

The development of a sensitive method for early cancer diagnosis is very important because the early diagnosis of cancer is crucial in preventing the spread of cancer cells and improving patient survival rates. Recent studies showed that cancer cell membranes have lower polarity than normal cell membranes, which provides a new approach for cancer diagnosis at the cell membrane level. We developed herein a highly sensitive cell membrane polarity probe (Cal-M) for early diagnosis of cancer. This probe has low cytotoxicity, good photostability, near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence emission (>700 nm), large Stokes shift, high sensitivity for polarity, excellent cell membrane localization performance, and the ability to selectively light up cancer cells. Using this probe staining, the fluorescence of cancer cells is ∼63 times higher than that of normal cells, demonstrating excellent sensitivity and selectivity of Cal-M. This probe was also successfully used to detect polarity changes on cancer cell membranes and selectively visualize tumors in mice. Notably, the tumor could be visualized sensitively with a size as small as 1.37 mm3, indicating that Cal-M is promising for early diagnosis of tumors.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.