Specific Screening of Prostate Cancer Individuals Using an Enzyme-Assisted Substrate Sensing Platform Based on Hierarchical MOFs with Tunable Mesopore Size

Abstract

Rapid and specific identification of tumor metabolic markers is of great significance. Herein, a convenient, reliable and specific strategy was proposed to screen prostate cancer (PCa) individuals through indirectly quantifying sarcosine, an early indicator of PCa, in the clinical urine samples. The success roots in the rational design of a cascade response model, which takes integrated sarcosine oxidase (SOX) as a specific recognition unit and oxygen-sensitive molecule as a signal reporter. The newly developed hierarchical mesoporous Zr-based metal–organic frameworks with continuously tunable mesopore size ensure the synergetic work of the SOX and response unit spatially separated in their neighboring mesoporous and microporous domains, respectively. The large mesopore up to 12.1 nm not only greatly enhances the loading capacity of SOX but also spares enough space for the free diffusion of sarcosine. On this basis, the probe is competent to specifically check out the tiny concentration change of sarcosine in the urine sample between PCa patients and healthy humans. Such a concept of enzyme-assisted substrate sensing could be simply extended by altering the type of immobilized enzymes, hopefully setting a guideline for the rational design of multiple probes to quantify specific biomarkers in complex biological samples.

Bimetallic Ordered Large-Pore MesoMOFs for Simultaneous Enrichment and Dephosphorylation of Phosphopeptides

“…Usually, for the synthesis of UiO-66 type MOFs, the morphology of the products would evolve from spheres to crystalline products with well-defined octahedron through the use of modulators . As a rule of thumb, compared with the synthesis of Zr–UiO-66, octahedral morphology would be produced by adding only a small amount of modulator in the synthesis of Ce–UiO-66. ,, Therefore, when a relatively low dosage of modulator was adopted, the continuous addition of Zr will restrain the rapid growth of truncated octahedral Ce–UiO-66 and make the assembly process tend to form spherical Zr/Ce–UiO-66. As a result, the mesoMOFs with lower feed ratios of Zr 4+ /Ce 4+ are more prone to form well-defined truncated octahedra, while high ratios of Zr 4+ /Ce 4+ would give rise to spherical particles (Scheme ).…”

“…43 As a rule of thumb, compared with the synthesis of Zr−UiO-66, octahedral morphology would be produced by adding only a small amount of modulator in the synthesis of Ce−UiO-66. 24,25,44 Therefore, when a relatively low dosage of modulator was adopted, the continuous addition of Zr will restrain the rapid growth of truncated octahedral S BET-meso (m 2 g −1 )…”

“…Recently, our group has shown that the synthesis of the hierarchical large-pore Ce- and Zr-based MOFs could be realized via a Hofmeister ion mediated template strategy, − which might be extensible for the construction of mesostructured mixed-metal MOFs. Previous works have demonstrated that Zr-based MOFs (Zr-MOFs) presented high affinity towards phosphoric groups .…”

Cyanine‐Doped Lanthanide Metal–Organic Frameworks for Near‐Infrared II Bioimaging

“…[ 1 ] Owing to the diversity of metal ions and organic ligands, the photophysical properties of MOFs can be precisely regulated, providing a versatile platform for biosensing and a great potential in in vivo imaging. [ 2 ] Furthermore, the property of high porosity makes them a kind of ideal material to achieve multimode imaging and fabricate multifunctional platforms. [ 3 ] However, most of the MOFs are excited by UV or visible photons and emit in visible region, suffering from poor penetration depth, strong autofluorescence, and limited contrast resolution, which has been a long‐term bottleneck to restrict their bioapplication.…”

Coordination Assemblies Based on a Methylthio Carboxylic Ligand: Syntheses, Structures and Luminescent Properties

“…[1,2] Reasonable ligand design and selection of metal ions can realize multi-functionalization of CP materials. [3,4] These CPs have been applied to the fields of luminescence, [5][6][7][8][9] sensing, [10][11][12][13] catalysis, [14][15][16] etc. The coordination groups in the ligands are usually pyridine, imidazole, hydroxyl, carboxyl, sulfhydryl, methylthio units containing nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen atoms, while the metal ions are usually transition, rare-earth, and a small number of main-group metals.…”