Hydrophilic Sulfonate Covalent Organic Frameworks for Serum Glycopeptide Profiling

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Aberrant protein glycosylation is closely associated with a number of biological processes and diseases. However, characterizing the types of post-translational modifications (PTMs) from the complex biological samples is challenging for comprehensive glycoproteomic analysis. The development of high-performance enrichment materials and strategies during the sample pretreatment process is a prerequisite to glycoproteome research. Here in this work, a sulfonate-rich covalent organic framework (COF) called TpPa-(SO₃H)₂ (referred to as SCOF-2) was synthesized using the Schiff base reaction for the identification of glycopeptides. Benefiting from high hydrophilicity and abundant sulfonate affinity, a total of 28 and 16 glycopeptides could be efficiently detected from the standard glycoproteins of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) tryptic digest, respectively. Moreover, the as-prepared sulfonate-rich SCOF-2 has an ultralow detection limit (0.01 fmol μL⁻¹), excellent enrichment selectivity (molar ratio HRP:BSA = 1:5000), satisfactory recovery rate (89.1%), high adsorption capacity (150 mg g⁻¹) and good reusability in the individual enrichment. Meanwhile, by using the SCOF-2 adsorbent, 196 and 194 endogenous glycopeptides in the serum of ovarian cancer patients and healthy people among triplicates were successfully enriched and identified, respectively, using combined nanoLC-MS/MS technology. It demonstrated its great application potential in glycoproteomics research and provided a novel insight for the design of affinity materials.