Recent advances in the application of core-shell structured magnetic materials for the separation and enrichment of proteins and peptides.

Many endogenous proteins/peptides and proteins/peptides with post-translational modifications (PTMs) are presented at extremely low abundance, and they usually suffer strong interference with highly abundant proteins/peptides as well as other contaminants, resulting in low ionization efficiency in MS analysis. Therefore, the separation and enrichment of proteins/peptides from complex mixtures is of great importance to the successful identification of them. Core-shell structured magnetic microspheres have been widely used in the enrichment and isolation of proteins/peptides, thanks to unique properties such as strong magnetic responsiveness, outstanding binding capacity, excellent biocompatibility, robust mechanical strength and admirable recoverability. The aim of this review is to update the advances in the application of core-shell structured magnetic materials for proteomics analysis, including the separation and enrichment of low-concentration proteins/peptides, the selective enrichment of phosphoproteins and the selective enrichment of glycoproteins, and to compare the enrichment performance of magnetic microspheres with different kinds of functionalization.