Electronic Supplementary Information ( ESI ) A Highly Fluorescent AIE-active Theranostic Agent with Anti-Tumor Activity to Specific Cancer Cells

b Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, Institute for Advanced Study, Division of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Science, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience, Institute of Molecular Functional Materials, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China


Table of Contents
Experimental Section Scheme S1 Synthetic route to TPE-TMX.

Instruments
1 H NMR and 13 C NMR spectra were measured on a Bruker AV 400 NMR spectrometer using CDCl 3 as a solvent and tetramethylsilane (TMS; δ = 0) as an internal reference.Absorption spectra were measured on a Milton Roy Spectronic 3000 Array spectrophotometer.Photoluminescence (PL) spectra were recorded on a Perkin-Elmer LS 55 spectrofluorometer with a xenon discharge lamp excitation.
High-resolution mass spectra (HRMS) were recorded on a GCT Premier CAB 048 mass spectrometer system operated in MALDI-TOF mode.

S5
Cell culture MCF-7，MDA-MB-231, HeLa and COS-7 cell lines were provided by American Type Culture Collection.The HeLa cells were cultured in MEM while MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and COS-7 cells were cultured in DMEM at 37 °C in a humidified incubator with 5% CO 2 .Both culture mediums contained 10% heat-inactivated FBS 100 U mL -1 penicillin and 100 μg mL -1 streptomycin.Before experiment, the cells were precultured until confluence was reached.

Cell imaging
Cells were grown overnight on a 35 mm petri dish with a cover slip.The live cells were incubated with the aqueous solution of TPE-TMX (2 μM) for 24 h followed by LTR (50 nM) for 15 min.The dye-labelled cells were then mounted in standard mounting media and imaged by fluorescence microscopy (BX 41 Microscope).

Cytotoxicity study
MTT assays were used to evaluate the cytotoxicity of TPE-TMX to different cell lines.
For each cell line, the cells were seeded in 96-well plates (Costar, IL, USA) at a density of 5 × 10 3 cells/well.After 24 h incubation, the cells were exposed to a series S6 of doses of TPE-TMX (0-10 μM) in culture medium at 37 °C.After 24 h incubation, 10 μL of freshly prepared MTT solution (5 mg/mL in PBS) was added into each well.
After 4 h incubation, 100 μL of solubilizing solution containing 10% SDS and 0.01 M HCl was added to dissolve the purple crystals.After 8 h incubation, the absorbance of MTT at 595 nm was monitored using a Perkin-Elmer Victor plate reader.Cell viability was expressed by the ratio of absorbance of the cells incubated with TPE-TMX to that of cells incubated with culture medium only.Each of the experiments was performed at least three times.All the images share the same scale bar (30 μm).Excitation wavelength: 330-385 nm.All images share the same scale bar (30 μm).

Fig. S4 (
Fig. S4 (A) PL spectra of TPE-TMX in THF/H 2 O mixtures with different water

Fig. S6 (
Fig. S6 (A-D) Bright-field and (E-H) fluorescent images of different cell lines

Fig
Fig. S7 (A-C) Bright-field and (D-F) fluorescent images of MCF-7 cells taken at

Fig. S8 (
Fig. S8 (A-D and I-L) Bright-field and (E-H and M-P) fluorescent images of Scheme S1 Synthetic route of TPE-TMX.
Fig. S5 PL spectra of TPE-TMX (red) and TMX (black) in THF/H 2 O mixtures with

Fig
Fig. S6 (A-D) Bright-field and (E-H) fluorescent images of different cell lines treated

Fig. S8 (
Fig. S8 (A-D and I-L) Bright-field and (E-H and M-P) fluorescent images of MCF-7