Many processes in the body remain hidden even with modern imaging techniques. Researchers at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT/UCC) in Dresden have now participated in an international study that has developed novel fluorescent proteins. In the future, these proteins could help make biological processes visible even in deeper layers of tissue.
Among those involved in the study was Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry David Baker, who was honored in 2024 for his work on computer-aided protein design. Together, the international team developed proteins that do not exist in this form in nature.
New Possibilities for Imaging
One of the two newly developed proteins emits particularly strong fluorescence in the far-red region. The other’s fluorescence even extends into the short-wave infrared region. In cell culture and animal experiments, these proteins enabled the visualization of biological structures with high sensitivity.
Professor Oliver Bruns, head of the Department of Functional Imaging at NCT/UCC Dresden, sees great potential in this development. "These newly developed proteins expand the toolkit for imaging in living organisms and could help in the future to investigate disease mechanisms, biological processes, or therapeutic effects even in deeper tissue layers."
In the long term, such protein molecules could support the further development of modern imaging techniques. Oliver Bruns’s research group is working, among other things, on technologies designed to visualize tumor tissue, blood vessels, or other structures more precisely during medical procedures.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, one of the world’s leading chemistry journals. In addition to the NCT/UCC Dresden, the TU Dresden, the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital in Dresden, the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf, and numerous research institutions from the U.S., China, the U.K., and Germany were involved in the work.
Original publication:
Liu Y. et al. (2026): De novo design of near-infrared fluorescence-activating proteins. Journal of the American Chemical Society 148(23): 23530–23539.
