Conventional sensor development requires defining the target and design of
sensor, which is so-called hypothesis driven approach. While powerful, this approach
cannot be applied to unknown target or difficult to be applied to complex of analytes. To
overcome the limitation, we have devised a Diversity Oriented Fluorescence Library
Approach (DOFLA) where a combinatorial synthesis of fluorescent dye is combined with unbiased screening to accelerate
the sensor development. More than 10,000 synthetic organic dyes were constructed as a tool box, and numerous
analytes have been tested, yielding systematic platform for sensor development for almost everything. Not only physical
analytes, phantom target such as “temperature” is also pursued with biological application. Complex or unknown target
problem with biological systems were also challenged, and various cell type selective probes for live bioimaging were
developed. In this presentation, especially the recently developed probe TiY for cancer stem cells will be mainly
discusssed. The sensors and probes developed in this study will be freely available for the chemical and biological
community for common usage.