The change of cancer cell metabolism is the root cause of tumor occurrence and growth; by controlling the abnormal metabolism of cancer cells to kill, inhibit cancer cells, or make them return to normal cells, it can effectively inhibit the process of cancer occurrence. However, there is a technical bottleneck of low efficiency and high cost in using traditional biochemical analysis methods to study cell metabolism and search for anticancer drugs. Nad / NADH is a pair of core metabolites, which is the best parameter to characterize the imbalance of cell metabolism.

Sonar, a new cell metabolism fluorescence probe developed by Yang Yi's team, is based on the synthetic biology method. It has high sensitivity, high brightness and huge dynamic range. It can detect the micro metabolism difference between cancer cells and normal cells, and truly realize the high-resolution detection and imaging of cell metabolism at the level of single cells and living animals. Using sonar, the team screened high-throughput compounds at the first living cell level based on cell metabolism and found that compound kp372-1 can extensively kill cancer cells from different human tissue sources at low concentrations.

Using metabonomics, chemical biology and genetic screening techniques, the researchers finally identified kp372-1 as a novel redox cycle substrate, which can generate extreme oxidative stress under the catalysis of NQO1 enzyme with high expression in cancer cells, and then kill cancer cells. It is reported that the compound has higher oral utilization, longer half-life and lower effective concentration than the classical anti-cancer compound β - lapaqone, which has been in clinical phase II and relies on NQO1.

It is reported that under the guidance of Yang Yi, the research was completed by Zhao Yuzheng, Hu qingxun and other graduate students in five years. At the same time, sonar probe can also be widely used in the real-time monitoring of living cells and living cells related to cell metabolism, providing important innovative tools and means for people to better understand the regulatory mechanism of material and energy metabolism