▎ 摘　　要

Simple, rapid and sensitive analysis of thrombin (a tumor biomarker) in complex samples is quite clinical relevant and essential for the development of disease diagnosis and pharmacotherapy. Herein, we developed a novel method based on aptamer-conjugated magnetic graphene/gold nanoparticles nanocomposites (MagG@Au) for specific enrichment and rapid analysis of thrombin in biological samples using MALDI-TOF-MS. At first, gold nanoparticles were compactly deposited on PDDA functionalized magnetic graphene through electrostatic interaction. Afterwards, aptamer was easily conjugated to gold nanoparticles via Au-S bond formation. The as-made aptamer-conjugated nanocomposites took advantage of the magnetism of magnetic graphene, the high affinity and specificity of aptamer, facilitating a high-efficient separation and enrichment of thrombin. More importantly, due to the large surface area of the hybrid substrate, the average coverage density of aptamer achieved 0.34 nmol/mg, which enhanced the thrombin binding capacity and the recovery of thrombin in real samples. In turn, the enriched thrombin attributed to the sensitive output of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry signal, 0.085 ng mu L-1 (2.36 nM) thrombin could be detected. This proposed method has a relatively wide linear relation ranging from 0.1 ng mu L-1 to 10 ng mu L-1, and satisfactory specificity. The proposed high-throughput method based on MALDI-TOF MS is expected to the application in the disease biomarker detection and clinical diagnosis. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.