ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,259,325, issued on March 25, was assigned to Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.).
"Zinc-responsive fluorophores" was invented by Seth A. Garwin (Evanston, Ill.), Emily L. Que (Evanston, Ill.), Thomas V. O'Halloran (Evanston, Ill.) and Teresa K. Woodruff (Chicago).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention relates generally to compositions and methods for the detection of zinc. Provided herein is a class of zinc-responsive probes with tunable photophysical properties that can be modified for coupling to a solid support or other chemical moieties. In particular, modifications to the 5-position of the BODIPY core allows for alteratio...