ABSTRACT
Molecular imaging is a type of medical imaging that visualizes cellular functions or molecular processes inside the body. The use of fluorescent probes targeted to tumor-specific molecules could provide a paradigm shift in surgical or endoscopic procedures, improving the outcome for cancer patients by providing a powerful new imaging technique for rapidly and specifically detecting cancerous lesions. Aminopeptidases are also good targets for fluorescence imaging of tumors, since they play essential roles in many diseases and some of them exhibit altered expression levels in the pathological context. A major advantage over current imaging modalities is that an intraoperative fluorescence imaging system offers a large field of view for inspection. Rhodamine spiroamide, in which the carboxylic acid at the 2? position of regular rhodamines is converted to amide, has also been utilized as a scaffold of activatable probes for detecting metal ions, and more recently for super-resolution imaging.
