Self-assembled thin-layer glycomaterials with an appropriate shell thickness for targeted and activatable cell imaging

The construction of targeted and activatable materials can largely improve the precision of disease diagnosis and therapy. However, the currently developed systems either target a transmembrane antigen or are activatable to release imaging and/or therapeutic reagents intracellularly. Here we develop a simple thin-layer glycomaterial through the self-assembly between fluorescent glycoprobes, in which the carbohydrate targeting reagent and the fluorophore are linked to each other by polyethlene glycol with a suitable chain length, and thin-layer manganese dioxide. The fluorogenic material developed is both capable of targeting a transmembrane glycoprotein receptor 'and' fluorescently activatable by intracellular biothiols. The shell thickness of the material was determined to be important for achieving the biothiol-induced activation of fluorescence. This research might provide insight into the development of precision-enhanced self-assembled materials for disease theranostics.