Ultrasensitive analysis of glucose in serum by capillary electrophoresis with LIF detection in combination with signal amplification strategies and on-column enzymatic assay.

A highly specific and sensitive method for glucose quantification in human serum samples based on on-column enzymatic assay is described. In this method, the head of the capillary was used as a nanoliter-microreactor, the diluted samples spiked with a novel fluorogenic reagent named 2-[6-(4'-amino) phenoxy-3H-xanthen-3-on-9-yl] benzoic acid (APF), and the mixed enzyme solutions of glucose oxidase (GOx) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP), were individually injected into the capillary. Hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) generated in situ by catalytic reaction between GOx and glucose, activates APF in the presence of HRP to form a highly fluorescent product, which was electrophoretically separated from the unreacted APF and detected by the LIF detector. The proposed method allowed the determination of glucose down to 10 nM in real samples, with RSD values lower than 3.5%, which also has the potential for measurements of multicomponents in many other systems including measurement of α-glucosidase activity and screening for its inhibitors.