Specific enrichment of urinary exosomes and exosomal glycopeptides by coefficient affinity of integrated L-cysteine and titania

Exosome and inclusive cargoes have manifested significant function in different biological events. In par-ticular, glycopeptides in exosome are closely associated with occurrence and development of various dis-eases. Developing advanced tools is highly desired to enrich glycopeptides from exosomes, and enrich exosomes from complex biological samples as well. In this work, integration of L-cysteine and titania onto the surface of magnetic nanoparticles is designed to realize the coefficient affinity towards exo-somes and inclusive glycopeptides. Benefiting from the synergistic affinity, we separate exosomes from human urine concentrate directly, which was proved by the detection of three typical antigen mark-ers of exosomes. Furthermore, hardly any exosomes remained on materials after ultrasonication, which confirmed the good capture performance of Fe3O4 @TiO2 @ L-Cys and high release effect of direct lysis. Moreover, 146 glycopeptides corresponding to 77 glycoproteins were successfully identified from cap-tured exosomes. These satisfactory results will inspire more efforts to be devoted to this field and will be extremely helpful to in-depth information excavation of biological markers, especially disease-related ones, through exosomes and inclusive glycopeptides. (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.