Ru(bpy)32+‐Enabled Cell‐Surface Photocatalytic Proximity Labeling toward More Efficient Capture of Physically Interacting Cells

Intercellular proximity labeling has emerged as a promising approach to enable the study of cell-cell interactions (CCIs), but the efficiency of current platforms is limited. Here, we use Ru(bpy)32+ to construct an efficient photocatalytic proximity labeling (PPL) system on the cell surface that allows the highly discriminative CCI detection with spatiotemporal resolution. Through the mechanism study and quantitative characterization on living cells, we demonstrate that the singlet-oxygen (1O2) mechanism is more efficient and specific than the single electron transfer (SET) mechanism in Ru-mediated PPL. Three Ru(bpy)32+ catalysts with different cell-anchoring moieties are prepared to facilitate the catalyst loading on different primary cells. Finally, based on this Ru-1O2-hydrazide system, we develop a “live” T cell receptor (TCR) multimer with TCR-T cells that could sensitively identify and discriminate cells presenting antigens of different affinity, providing a powerful tool to better understand the heterogeneity of antigen presenting cells.