Gd-MOF composites luminescent arrays for highly sensitive detection of epileptic drug and biomarkers

Nowadays, more than 50 million people suffer from epilepsy in worldwide. Epilepsy can be diagnosed more efficiently by detecting epileptic biomarkers such as human serum albumin (HSA) and relative nucleic acid. Pregabalin is an effective curing drug for epilepsy, but the dosage of it needs to be strictly controlled. In this work, to realize highly efficiently detect and discriminate epileptic curing drugs and biomarkers (pregabalin, epilepsy-DNA-1, and HSA), a novel Gd-MOF has been synthesized by H2L ligand (H2L = 5-(4-(imidzol-1-yl)phenyl)isophthalic acid), namely [Gd2L3(DMF)(H2O)2]n, which can be further functionalized with 3-Bromo-L-phenylalanine (L-3-Br-PHE-OH), thioflavin T (ThT) and fluorescein isothiocyanate isomer I labeled anti-HSA (anti-HSA/FITC), respectively. Through the post-synthetic modification (PSM) method, three Gd-MOF composite materials with good luminescence performance can be successfully prepared, namely Gd-MOF@L-3-Br-PHE-OH (Gd-MOF-1), Gd-MOF@ThT (Gd-MOF-2), Gd-MOF@anti-HSA/FITC (Gd-MOF-3). These three composite materials can be used for the detection of pregabalin, epilepsy-DNA-1, and HSA with high selectivity and sensitivity, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) is 45.41 nM for pregabalin, 5.56 nM for epilepsy-DNA-1, and 5.11 nM for HSA. Development of detection application of Gd-MOF composite materials for drugs and biomarkers was also performed in the real biological samples. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) results demonstrated that Gd-MOF based luminescent array can simultaneously identify and detect epileptic drugs and biomarkers in the human serum environment. Finally, detection mechanisms for this epileptic drug and biomarkers were also investigated and discussed in detail.