Biopsy, including tissue and liquid biopsy, offers comprehensive and real-time physiological and pathological information for disease detection, diagnosis, and monitoring. Fluorescent probes are frequently selected to obtain adequate information on pathological processes in a rapid and minimally invasive manner based on their advantages for biopsy. However, conventional fluorescent probes have been found to show aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) properties, impeding greater progresses in this area. Since the discovery of aggregation-induced emission luminogen (AIEgen) have promoted rapid advancements in molecular bionanomaterials owing to their unique properties, including high quantum yield (QY) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), etc. This review seeks to present the latest advances in AIEgen-based biofluorescent probes for biopsy in real or artificial samples, and also the key properties of these AIE probes. This review is divided into: (i) tissue biopsy based on smart AIEgens, (ii) blood sample biopsy based on smart AIEgens, (iii) urine sample biopsy based on smart AIEgens, (iv) saliva sample biopsy based on smart AIEgens, (v) biopsy of other liquid samples based on smart AIEgens, and (vi) perspectives and conclusion. This review could provide additional guidance to motivate interest and bolster more innovative ideas for further exploring the applications of various smart AIEgens in precision medicine.

Aggregation-Induced Emission luminogen (AIEgen) possess great potential in enhancing bioimaging-guided radiotherapeutic effects and radioimmunotherapy to improve the therapeutic effects of the tumor with good biosafety. Bacteria as a natural carrier have demonstrated great advantages in tumor targeted delivery and penetration to tumor. Herein, we construct a delivery platform that Salmonella VNP20009 act as an activated bacteria vector loaded the as-prepared novel AIEgen (TBTP-Au, VNP@TBTP-Au), which showed excellent radio-immunotherapy. VNP@TBTP-Au could target and retain AIEgen at the tumor site and deliver it into tumor cells specially, upon X-ray irradiation, much ROS was generated to induce immunogenic cell death via cGAS-STING signaling pathway to evoke immune response, thus achieving efficient radioimmunotherapy of the primary tumor with good biosafety. More importantly, the radioimmunotherapy with VNP@TBTP-Au formatted good abscopal effect that was able to suppress the growth of distant tumor. Our strategy pioneer a novel and simple strategy for the organic combination of bacteria and imaging-guided radiotherapy, and also pave the foundation for the combination with immunotherapy for better therapeutic effects.

Perturbed neuronal migration and abnormal axonogenesis have been shown to be implicated in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the molecular mechanism remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that dendritic cell factor 1(DCF1) is involved in neuronal migration and axonogenesis. The deletion of dcf1 in mice delays the localization of callosal projection neurons, while dcf1 overexpression restores normal migration. Delayed neurons appear as axon swelling and axonal boutons loss, resulting in a permanent deficit in the callosal projections. Western blot analysis indicates that absence of dcf1 leads to the abnormal activation of ERK signal. Differential protein expression assay shows that PEBP1, a negative regulator of the ERK signal, is significant downregulation in dcf1 KO mice. Direct interaction between DCF1 and PEBP1 is confirmed by Co-immunoprecipitation test, thus indicating that DCF1 regulates the ERK signal in a PEBP1-dependent pattern. As a result of the neurodevelopmental migration disorder, dcf1 deletion results in ASD-like behaviors in mice. This finding identifies a link between abnormal activated ERK signaling, delayed neuronal migration and autistic-like behaviors in humans.