2016 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 127-134
Nitric oxide(NO) is now recognized as an endogenous signaling molecule involved in various physiological events such as vasodilation. Since NO is a gaseous molecule and has a short half-life due to high chemical reactivity under ambient conditions, NO itself is practically hard to be handled in biological systems. So, NO chemical donors which release NO under physiological conditions are now indispensable chemical tools in NO biological research. Especially, “caged” NO, which releases NO in response to photoirradiation, are advantageous in NO treatment with spatiotemporal control. We have been developed caged NOs, which have unique photochemical reaction mechanisms for NO release, and adopted them to tissue and in vivo experiments. It was demonstrated that some are responsible for visible light and applicable cellular and tissue experiments, and others are responsible to near infrared pulse laser and applicable for in vivo experiments.
