Facile preparation of porphyrin-based porous organic polymers for specific enrichment and isolation of phosphopeptides and phosphorylated exosomes

Exosomes, which can be used to investigate various disease processes, are novel disease markers that have been extensively studied in recent years. In this work, zirconium-rich porphyrin-based porous organic polymers (Imi-Pops-Zr) were synthesized by a facile and low-cost strategy for specific enrichment and isolation of phosphorylated peptides and exosomes. The proposed material demonstrates a low detection limit (0.5 fmol), a high selectivity (bovine serum albumin (BSA): β-casein = 1000:1), and a loading capability of 100 mg/g for phosphopeptides. For complex practical samples, after enrichment with Imi-Pops-Zr, 4 characteristic phosphopeptides from human serum, 20 and 12 phosphopeptides from human saliva and defatted milk were detected, respectively. Besides, 74 phosphorylated peptides with 67 phosphorylation sites belonging to 61 phosphoproteins and 67 phosphorylated peptides with 63 phosphorylation sites belonging to 65 phosphoproteins were detected from the serum of normal controls and uremic patients, respectively. Biological processes, cellular components and molecular functions revealed that interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor, high density lipoprotein and proteases binding may be associated with uremia. Furthermore, Imi-Pops-Zr was successfully used to enrich and isolate exosomes from human serum. The experimental results show that Imi-Pops-Zr has promising application in the specific enrichment of phosphorylated peptides and exosomes in complex bio-samples.