Published in

Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(5), 2014

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4276

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A sensitive two-photon probe to selectively detect monoamine oxidase B activity in Parkinson's disease models

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The unusually high MAO-B activity consistently observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients has been proposed as a biomarker; however, this has not been realized due to the lack of probes suitable for MAO-B-specific detection in live cells/tissues. Here we report the first two-photon, small molecule fluorogenic probe (U1) that enables highly sensitive/specific and real-time imaging of endogenous MAO-B activities across biological samples. We also used U1 to confirm the reported inverse relationship between parkin and MAO-B in PD models. With no apparent toxicity, U1 may be used to monitor MAO-B activities in small animals during disease development. In clinical samples, we find elevated MAO-B activities only in B lymphocytes (not in fibroblasts), hinting that MAO-B activity in peripheral blood cells might be an accessible biomarker for rapid detection of PD. Our results provide important starting points for using small molecule imaging techniques to explore MAO-B at the organism level.