Design and synthesis of fluorogenic substrate-based probes for detecting Cathepsin B activity

Abstract Cathepsin B plays key roles in tumor progression with its overexpression being associated with invasive and metastatic phenotypes and is a primary target of protease activated antibody-directed prodrug therapy. It therefore represents a potential therapeutic and diagnostic target and effort has been made to develop fluorescent probes to report on Cathepsin B activity in cells and animal models of cancer. We have designed, synthesized, and thoroughly evaluated four novel “turn on” probes that employ a lysosomotropic dansylcadaverine dye to report on Cathepsin B activity. Enzyme activity assays using a recombinant human enzyme and cancer cell lysates coupled with confocal microscopy experiments demonstrated that one of the probes, derivatized with the self-immolative prodrug linker p-aminobenzyl alcohol, can selectively report on Cathepsin B in biological samples including live cells.