Rational Approaches and Design Strategies for Fluorogenic Probes for Cancer Detection, Diagnostics, and Biomarker Research

Cancer, a leading cause of premature death, can be prevented through early diagnosis. Nowadays, extensive research is ongoing for the development of various nanomaterials, which can be utilized for molecular early diagnostics of cancer; results in detection of varied number of tumor biomarkers using various sophisticated imaging techniques. Thus, the early diagnosis of cancer is the most effective approach to reduce the burden on the health care system owing to the cancer mortality and comorbidity rates. However, due to the complex nature of cancerous cells, the early detection remains challenging. It is a well-known fact that during the onset or progression of various cancers, an aberrant cellular biochemical activity is observed. Consequently, a library of fluorogenic probes has been developed to monitor these aberrant biochemical processes, and exhibits promising results over traditional methods. During the last decade, extensive research has been done to explore various design strategies in order to find out the most promising chemical architectures. In this regard, the present chapter provides a detailed description of the rational design ideas explored for the synthesis of various enzyme-activated fluorogenic probes to monitor the aberrant cellular biochemical activity for early detection of cancer.