Chemically modified carbon nanotubes as material enhanced laser desorption ionisation (MELDI) material in protein profiling Original Research Article

Biomarkers play a potential role in the early detection and diagnosis of a disease. Our aim is to derivatize carbon nanotubes for exploration of the differences in human body fluids e.g. serum, through matrix assisted laser desorption ionisation/time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI/TOF-MS) that can be related to disease and subsequently to be employed in the biomarker discovery process. This application we termed as the material enhanced laser desorption ionisation (MELDI). The versatility of this technology is meant to increase the amount of information from biological samples on the protein level, which will have a major impact to serve the cause of diagnostic markers. Serum peptides and proteins are immobilized on derivatized carbon nanotubes, which function as binding material. Protein-loaded suspension is placed on a stainless steel target or buckypaper on aluminum target for direct analysis with MALDI-MS. The elution method to wash the bound proteins from carbon nanotubes was employed to compare with the direct analysis procedure. Elution is carried out by MALDI matrix solution to get them out of the entangled nanotubes, which are difficult to desorb by laser due to the complex nanotube structures. The advantage of these optimized methods compared to the conventional screening methods is the improved sensitivity, selectivity and the short analysis time without prior albumin and immunoglobulin depletion. The comparison of similarly modified diamond and carbon nanotubes exhibit differences in their nature to bind the proteins out of serum due to the differences in their physical characteristics. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy provided hint for the presence of tertiary amine peak at the crucial chemical step of iminodiacetic acid addition to acid chloride functionality on carbon nanotubes. Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) was utilized to quantitatively measure the copper capacity of these derivatized carbon nanotubes which is a direct measure of capacity of this material to bind the number of proteins from serum.