Molecularly imprinted mesoporous silica nanoparticles for specific extraction and efficient identification of Amadori compounds.

Amadori compounds are an important family of chemical species with high values in the quality control and research of food and tobacco products as well as disease diagnosis. Since they are present in a large population with close structure and nature, recognition of specific Amadori compounds from complex sample matrices presents a challenging task. Particularly, few reagents or materials that can recognize specific Amadori compounds have been reported. In this study, we synthesized molecularly imprinted mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MIMSNs) that can highly specifically recognize and efficiently extract an Amadori compound of interest from complex samples. N-(1-deoxy-d-glucose-1-yl)tryptophan (Glc-Trp), a typical Amadori compound, was used as the template and target compound. The prepared MIMSNs exhibited excellent binding properties. The cross-reactivity was only 2.9-4.8% towards interfering analogs. The binding constant and binding capacity towards the target were 66 μM and 45 μmol/g, respectively. The imprinting approach showed outstanding imprinting effect, giving an imprinting factor of 119.4. Through combining MIMSNs-based extraction with electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and capillary electrography (CE), a targeted analysis approach was established and demonstrated to be an efficient platform for identification and determination of Glc-Trp from cigarette sample.