The 5th International Conference on Fluorescent Biomolecules and their Building Blocks (FB3) was hosted in Hong Kong by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Hong Kong Baptist University from 10-13 March 2024. Syed Ali Abbas Abedi delivered an oral presentation on the research work on photoacoustic imaging agents (PAI) and how the work will lead to a new step forward in developing high-performance PAI contrast agents for disease diagnostics (i.e., cancer).