{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,22]],"date-time":"2026-07-22T17:44:40Z","timestamp":1784742280854,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,22]],"date-time":"2025-05-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1747872000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Shanxi Basic Research Project","award":["202303021221058"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202303021221058"]}]},{"name":"Shanxi Basic Research Project","award":["2023-B-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023-B-01"]}]},{"name":"Scientific Research Fund for the Doctoral Young Scholars of Shanxi Datong University","award":["202303021221058"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202303021221058"]}]},{"name":"Scientific Research Fund for the Doctoral Young Scholars of Shanxi Datong University","award":["2023-B-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023-B-01"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Molecules"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Lysosomes are important acidic subcellular organelles whose dysfunction can lead to some related diseases. The development of new lysosome-imaging-guided AIEgens for the photodynamic therapy of cancer cells is important. In this work, two novel organic compounds with AIE characteristics, namely, TPAB-CF3 and TPAB-diCF3, were designed and synthesized by introducing the weakly basic morpholinyl moiety with lysosome-targeting ability into a triphenylamine-based luminogen. The distorted spatial feature of TPA and the D1-D2-\u03c0-A structure of these AIEgens prevented the aggregation-caused quenching of traditional fluorescent molecules and efficiently promoted the separation of the HOMO and LUMO. The outcomes were AIE features and a narrow single-triplet energy gap. Furthermore, TPAB-CF3 and TPAB-diCF3 showed bright yellow fluorescence emission peaks at 577 and 601 nm; large Stokes shifts of 234 and 256 nm, respectively; and excellent lysosome-targeted imaging of HeLa cells (Pearson\u2019s coefficient = 0.90). In addition to the good 1O2-generation ability under light irradiation, these AIEgens achieved the high-efficiency bright lysosome imaging-guided photodynamic killing of cancer cells under white-light irradiation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/molecules30112272","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,22]],"date-time":"2025-05-22T10:24:45Z","timestamp":1747909485000},"page":"2272","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Construction of Triphenylamine-Based Aggregation-Induced Emission Luminogens for Lysosomes Imaging and Its Application in the Photodynamic Therapy of Cancer Cells"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"30","author":[{"given":"Zhanguo","family":"Sun","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanxi Datong University, Datong 037009, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Bin","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Molecular Engineering, Ministry of Education, Institute of Molecular Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Huijun","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanxi Datong University, Datong 037009, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"622","DOI":"10.1038\/nrm2217","article-title":"Lysosomes: Fusion and function","volume":"8","author":"Luzio","year":"2007","journal-title":"Nat. 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