Synthesis and characterization of a 5-membered ring cyclic hydroxylamine coupled to triphenylphosphonium to detect mitochondrial superoxide by EPR spectrometry.

As mitochondrial superoxide is becoming an attractive metabolic and pharmacological target, there is an important need for developing analytical tools able to detect superoxide with high sensitivity and specificity. Among EPR-based methods, it has been recently reported that cyclic hydroxylamines offer a high sensitivity to measure superoxide production. Here, we report the synthesis and evaluation of mitoCPH, in which a 5-membered ring hydroxylamine was coupled to a triphenylphosphonium moiety to allow mitochondrial accumulation. MitoCPH efficiently reacted with superoxide with a bimolecular rate constant of 1.5 × 10