Intraoperative pathological diagnosis for breast cancer with a polarity fluorescent probe targeting lipid droplets

Precise intraoperative pathological diagnosis is crucial for effective surgical management. However, conventional method based on hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining of frozen sections often suffers from accuracy limitations due to a variety of factors. In this study, we developed a novel and efficient method utilizing a lipid droplets (LDs)-targeted fluorescent probe, named NA-LD, for intraoperative pathological diagnosis of breast cancer. Owing to the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) effect, NA-LD exhibited ultrasensitive fluorescence responses to environmental polarity changes, enabling high-fidelity imaging of LDs. Interestingly, the probe was capable of differentiating breast cancer cells from normal ones by visualizing the difference of LDs characteristics, including polarity, number and size. Furthermore, using NA-LD the discrimination of tumor in a mouse model was achieved. Most importantly, it has been successfully applied in determining the benign or malignant nature of the intraoperative breast lesion, as well as in discriminating ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). Therefore, this work may provide novel insights for the precise diagnosis and personalized treatment of breast cancer patients.