Novel D-π-A conjugated microporous polymer as visible light-driven oxidase mimic for efficient colorimetric detection of glutathione

Abstract Enzyme-like materials possess advantages over their natural counterparts due to their high stability, low cost, and ease of production and thus have been developed rapidly in the biomedical area. This paper introduced a novel conjugated microporous polymer (CMP-LS9) as the mimic of a photo-sensitized oxidase via Suzuki polymerization reactions with electron-donating and electron-withdrawing monomers. CMP-LS9 showed excellent nanopore properties and good light-harvesting capacity, leading to remarkable photo-sensitized oxidase mimic activity. Upon addition of glutathione (GSH) into the CMP-LS9/TMB system under visible light, effective inhibition of 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) oxidation was observed. Therefore, an efficient colorimetric assay was developed for the detection of GSH. Quantitative detection of GSH in the range of 0.2 − 20 μM with a limit of detection of 0.06 μM was achieved. Moreover, this approach was applied for GSH analysis in human serum samples, which verified its promising practical application with high accuracy. This work not only provides an instructive strategy to design novel CMPs enzyme-like materials but also broadens the biosensing applications of CMPs.