Manganese oxide assisted atomic nanocomposite with multienzyme-like antioxidant activities for chemiluminescent immunoassay of fentanyl.

BACKGROUND: The abuse of fentanyl by excessive clinical prescription and addictive drug taking have caused serious public concerns. It's of great significance to explore fast and simple method with satisfying sensitivity for screening fentanyl in biological specimens. Chemiluminescent immunoassay (CLIA) can achieve very high sensitivity in the presence of catalysts. As newly emerging catalysts, atomic nanozymes refer to enzyme-like nanomaterials with active sites minimized to atomic scale, exhibiting extremely high atom utilization efficiency and promising catalytic activity. However, improvement of their loading capacity and diversification of their forms of active sites are still challenges.

RESULTS: Mn-MOF-5 with atomic active sites was adopted as the shell to encapsulate MnOx with high Mn loading amount up to 40.6 %. The synthesized MnOx@Mn-MOF-5 nanocomposite shows high quenching efficacy on the chemiluminescent signal of reactive oxygen species-mediated Co2+-lucigenin-H2O2 system with a quenching rate up to 84.3 %. Benefiting from its mixed valent states and diverse forms of Mn active sites, MnOx@Mn-MOF-5 exhibits enhanced superoxide dismutase- and catalase-like activities, and hydroxyl radical scavenging capacity for eliminating ROS and decomposing H2O2. To validate the application potential of MnOx@Mn-MOF-5 as a chemiluminescent quencher, a CLIA method was established for detecting fentanyl. The method displayed a satisfying quantitative range of 0.1 pg mL-1 - 25 ng mL-1 and a detection limit as low as 0.03 pg mL-1. Its application potency was successfully validated by detecting fentanyl in biological specimens.

SIGNIFICANCE: This study demonstrates the enhancement of multienzyme-like activities in nanocomposite by constructing multi-valent active sites. It provides possibility of combining merits of high loading capacity, multienzyme-like activities and superb catalytic activity into one nanocomposite. Based on the superb antioxidant activity of MnOx@Mn-MOF-5, this nanocomposite can be used for ultra-sensitive chemiluminescent assay.