Moving into the red – a near infra-red optical probe for analysis of human neutrophil elastase in activated neutrophils and neutrophil extracellular traps Rodriguez Rios, Maria Megía Fernández, Alicia Neutrophils are the first immune cells recruited for defence against invading pathogens; however, their dysregulated activation and subsequent release of the enzyme human neutrophil elastase is associated with several, inflammation-based, diseases. Herein, we describe a FRET-based, tri-branched (one quencher, three fluorophores) near infrared probe that provides an intense OFF/ON amplified fluorescence signal for specific detection of human neutrophil elastase. The probe allowed selective detection of activated neutrophils and labelling of neutrophil extracellular traps. A tri-branched, FRET-based probe for the detection of hNE was synthesised with emission in the NIR region of the spectrum, where endogenous biomolecules have decreased absorbance, and minimal autofluorescence 2023-10-25T10:23:16Z 2023-10-25T10:23:16Z 2023-09 journal article Chem. Commun., 2023, 59, 11660[DOI: 10.1039/d3cc03634k] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85243 10.1039/d3cc03634k eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Royal Society of Chemistry