Detection of Hydrogen Peroxide in vitro and in vivo Using Peroxalate Chemiluminescent Micelles

Hydrogen peroxide plays a key role as a second messenger in the normal cellular signaling but its overproduction has been implicated in various life-threatening diseases. Peroxalate chemiluminescence is the light emission from a three component reaction between peroxalate, hydrogen peroxide and fluorophores. It has proven great potential as a methodology to detect hydrogen peroxide in physiological environments because of its excellent sensitivity and specificity to hydrogen peroxide. We developed chemiluminescent micelles composed of amphiphilic polymers, peroxalate and fluorescent dyes to detect hydrogen peroxide at physiological concentrations. In this work, we studied the relationship between the chemiluminescence reactivity and stability of peroxalate by varying the substitutes on the aryl rings of peroxalate. Alkyl substitutes on the aryl ring of peroxalate increased the stability against water hydrolysis, but diminished the reactivity to hydrogen peroxide. Chemiluminescent micelles encapsulating diphenyl peroxalate showed significantly higher chemiluminescence intensity than the counterpart encapsulating dimethylphenyl or dipropylphenyl peroxalate. Diphenyl peroxalate-encapsulated micelles could detect hydrogen peroxide generated from macrophage cells stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and image hydrogen peroxide generated during LPS-induced inflammatory responses in a mouse.