Design and Applications of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticle loaded Copper as a Colorimetric Sensor for glutathione detection

In recent years, the development of nanomaterials-based peroxidase mimics as enzyme sensors have been attracting considerable interest due to their outstanding features, including potent stability and cost-effectiveness toward natural enzymes. In this work, mesoporous silica nanoparticles-functionalized by copper (Cu-MSN) was prepared as a new artificial enzyme for the first time through the sol-gel procedure. A comprehensive investigation of the catalytic activity of Cu-MSN was done through the oxidation of chromogenic peroxidase substrates,3,3′,5,5′- tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) and (2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS), in the presence of H 2 O 2 . The results indicate that the peroxidase-like activity of the as-prepared sample is significantly higher than other nanoparticles. Additionally, for the study, a facile and rapid sensing method based on the enzyme-like activity of Cu-MSN to detect H 2 O 2 and glutathione (GSH) was developed to examine the potency of the proposed biosensor. Preliminary analysis revealed that the limit of detection (LOD) of H 2 O 2 and GSH is 0.2 and 0.0126 μM, in the range of 0.9-100 and 0.042-1 μM, respectively. These findings support the claims for the efficiency of the sensor in detection fields. Also, human serum was utilized as the real sample to obtain additional evidence.