Highly Efficient Solid‐Phase Labeling of Saccharides within Boronic Acid Functionalized Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles

Labeling is critical for the detection, quantitation, and structural identification of saccharides. However, conventional liquid-phase labeling suffers from apparent disadvantages, such as time-consuming, the presence of excessive labeling reagent, and high applicable saccharide concentration. A solid-phase approach is presented for highly efficient labeling of saccharides, using boronic acid functionalized mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) as a selective extraction sorbent and nanoscale reactor. The solid-phase labeling approach exhibited several significant advantages, including: much faster reaction speed (taking only 2 min), high product purity, and much lower applicable saccharide concentration (four orders of magnitude lower than that of liquid-phase labeling). Thus, this labeling approach opens up new avenues to the facile and efficient labeling of saccharides.