Biological processes are of great significance for the normal physiological functions of living organisms and closely related to the health. Monitoring of biological processes and diagnosis of diseases based on fluorescent techniques would provide comprehensive insight into mechanism of life and pathogenesis of diseases, precisely guiding therapeutic effect in theranostics. It largely relied on fluorophores with the properties of excellent photostability, large Stokes shift, high signal-to-noise ratio and free of aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect. Luminogens with aggregation-induced emission characteristic (AIEgens) could serve as superior agents for biological process monitoring and disease theranostics. Herein, we review the recent results in the aspects of monitoring biological processes such as autophagy, mitophagy, mitochondrion-related dynamics, cell mitotic, long-term cellular tracing and apoptosis as well as the diagnosis of related diseases based on AIEgens in real time. As part of AIEgens and AIEgen-based nanoparticles with the functionalities of drugs, photosensitizers and adjuvants accompanied with imaging, they exhibit huge potential in theranostic systems for image-guided chemotherapy, photodynamic therapy, radiotherapy and so on. Collectively, these examples show the potentials of AIEgens for understanding disease pathogenesis, for drug development and evaluation, and for clinical disease diagnosis and therapy. Future research efforts focused on developing long-wavelength excitable and phosphorescence-emissive AIEgens with improved depth-penetration and minimized background interference for fluorescence and photoacoustic imaging, will extend the potential applications of AIEgens in in vivo.

中文翻译：

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用于生物过程监控和疾病诊断的AIEgens

生物过程对于活生物体的正常生理功能具有重要意义，并且与健康密切相关。基于荧光技术的生物过程监测和疾病诊断将提供对生命机制和疾病发病机理的全面了解，从而精确地指导治疗诊断学的治疗效果。它在很大程度上依赖于具有出色的光稳定性，大的斯托克斯位移，高的信噪比和无聚集引起的猝灭（ACQ）效应的荧光团。具有聚集诱导发射特征的发光剂（AIEgens）可以作为生物过程监控和疾病治疗的优良试剂。在此，我们回顾了在监测生物过程（例如自噬，线粒体吞噬，线粒体相关动力学，细胞有丝分裂，长期细胞追踪和凋亡以及基于AIEgens的相关疾病的实时诊断。作为具有药物，光敏剂和佐剂功能的AIEgens和基于AIEgen的纳米颗粒的一部分，同时还具有成像功能，它们在诊断学系统中具有巨大的潜力，可用于图像引导的化学疗法，光动力疗法，放射疗法等。这些例子共同显示了AIEgens在理解疾病发病机理，药物开发和评估以及临床疾病诊断和治疗方面的潜力。未来的研究工作集中在开发长波长可激发的和发磷光的AIEgen，这种AIEgen具有更好的深度穿透性和最小的背景干扰，可用于荧光和光声成像，体内。