The hydrophilic boronic acid-poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate copolymer brushes functionalized magnetic carbon nanotubes for the selective enrichment of glycoproteins

Abstract

An efficient and selective glycoproteins enrichment platform is essential to glycoprotein biomarkers in early clinic diagnostics. In this work, the poly (ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMA) and 4-vinylphenylboronic acid (VPBA) copolymer brushes grafted magnetic carbon nanotubes composite MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) was prepared by surface-initiated atom transfer polymerization and applied for the selective enrichment of glycoproteins from the complex biological samples. The as-prepared MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) nanocomposite was characterized by Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) can recognize and bind specifically for glycoproteins via strong boronate affinity and excellent hydrophilicity and shows a really low non-specificity adsorption capability for non-glycoproteins. The adsorption capacity of MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) towards glycoproteins transferrin (Trf), horseradish peroxidase (HRP), and non-glycoproteins cytochrome c (Cyt C), lysozyme (Lyz) is 253.3 mg g−1, 51.1 mg g−1, 13.9 mg g−1 and 14.5 mg g−1, respectively. Furthermore, MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) can be applied to extract glycoproteins directly from egg white samples. These results demonstrated that MCNTs@p (PEGMA-co-VPBA) could be a potential affinity adsorbent in glycoprotein enrichment.