MOF based fluorescent assay of xanthine oxidase for rapid inhibitor screening with real-time kinetics monitoring

Abstract The activity assay of xanthine oxidase (XO) is of great application value in clinical diagnosis because the abnormal level of this enzyme is related to a series of pathological states. In this work, a Zr based metal-organic framework (BTB-MOF) with stable photoluminescence in pure water and buffer solution was synthesized. The examination about the fluorescent responses of this material to xanthine and its oxidation product, uric acid, showed that, although both of them affected the emission of BTB-MOF in quenching form, the efficiencies presented much difference. Taking advantage of this feature, a fluorescent method was developed for the activity assay of XO, that is, BTB-MOF was added to the enzymatic oxidation system as a sensor to transduce the proceeding of the reaction real-timely to the signal of fluorescent intensity change. Our method can work under the interference of normal biologically related species, and precisely reflect XO activity in the range of 0.2–40 U L −1 (detection limit = 0.004 U L −1 ). With consecutive fluorescence intensity scan, this assay could be applied as a high speed screening method of XO inhibitors with the testing time of 1 min. This work shows the wide potential application of MOFs in enzyme analysis.