Water-Soluble Conjugated Organic Molecules as Optical and Electrochemical Materials for Interdisciplinary Biological Applications

Apart from the wide applications in the field of electronic and optoelectronic devices, conjugated molecules have been established as useful functional materials for biological applications. By introducing hydrophilic side chains to conjugated backbones, water-soluble conjugated polymers or oligomers (CPs or COs) inherit the attractive optical and electronic properties from conjugated molecules, while their water solubility ensures interaction with biological substrates such as biomacromolecules, microorganisms, and living cells for further biological applications. Benefiting from high brightness, large extinction coefficients, excellent photostability, low cytotoxicity, stability in bodily fluids, and versatile structural modifications, water-soluble conjugated polymers and oligomers have offered powerful alternatives in a variety of biological applications including biological and chemical sensors, fluorescence imaging, disease diagnostics, and therapy. This Account will focus on our recent advances in design, synthesis, and interdisciplinary biological applications of a series of new water-soluble CP and CO materials, starting with a brief introduction to water-soluble CPs and COs and various methods and strategies developed for the preparation of advanced water-soluble CPs and COs. Since their properties can be tuned by rational design and synthesis at the level of the conjugated repeat unit and versatile pendant groups, CPs and COs provide a diverse toolbox for satisfying interdisciplinary biological applications. The application of water-soluble CPs and COs in the past five years can be broadly categorized into four areas. Specifically, integrating the unique optoelectronic properties of water-soluble CPs and COs with self-assembly and supramolecular strategies, efficacy regulation of antibiotic and anticancer drugs has been achieved, meanwhile drug resistance could be overcome and drug resistant "superbacteria" can be inhibited. For applications regulating cellular functions and biological processes, we introduce CPs and COs with the ability to regulate intracellular oxidative stress, cell-cell communication, cellular proliferation, cell membrane permeability, and quorum sensing of bacteria cells. By covalent linkage of reactive groups upon CPs and COs, these molecules are endowed with abilities like disassembly of amyloid polypeptides, biased distribution in cells, selective imaging of organelles, and distinguished interactions with biomolecules. For photothermal therapy (PTT) applications, photothermal-responsive conjugated polymer materials have been utilized for remote control of gene expression in living cells and in vivo photothermal therapy of cancer. Beyond these applications, we have achieved new interdisciplinary applications of water-soluble CP and CO materials for biological optoelectronic devices including photosynthesis, photocatalysis, and bioenergy. Specific features or properties of water-soluble CPs and COs are leveraged to bring opportunities for each of these applications. These studies open a new frontier for development of new functional conjugated molecule materials and provide better understanding of their interactions with biological systems as well as structure/property relationships. Current limitations confronted by CPs and COs are raised, and developmental direction for the future is proposed.