Superlong afterglow reporter for the detection of porphyria in whole blood

Abstract Porphyrins are endogenous photosensitizers, which are widely present in living systems. Endogenous porphyrins in the human body are mainly the precursors for heam biosynthesis. However, excessive porphyrins can lead to syndrome porphyria, causing skin photosensitivity and damage, anemia, hepatotoxicity, or organ failure. Traditional detection techniques include spectrometry and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Without any pretreatment, they can hardly determine the level of porphyrins in whole blood. Therefore, it's significantly important to realize highly efficient detection of porphyrins. In this work, we proposed a superlong afterglow reporter to realize easy and rapid detection for porphyria. The molecular afterglow reporters can respond to singlet oxygen (1O2) produced by porphyrins, and the detection signals can be received by the emission of afterglow reporters. During the detection process, afterglow signals can avoid the autofluorescence and scattering of complex biological system to reduce the interference of background noise. Our study demonstrates that superlong afterglow reporter is a promising technique for efficient and accurate detection of porphyria and has a great potential in clinical detection.