Online photocatalytic device for highly selective pre-column fluorescence derivatization of 5-hydroxyindoles with benzylamine

Photocatalytic reactive liquid microjunction surface sampling-mass spectrometry for rapid and selective in-situ analysis of alpha-unsubstituted amine metabolites or drugs in brain tissue

In in-situ mass spectrometry (MS), different on-tissue derivatization methods have been developed to enhance the signals of poorly ionizable primary amines. However, those chemical derivatization methods are laborious and time-consuming, and are usually limited to detection of high-abundance amino acids which suppress the reaction of low-abundance monoamine neurotransmitters and drugs. Herein, A rapid and selective photocatalytic derivatization technique for alpha-unsubstituted primary amine was developed with 5-hydroxyindole as derivatization reagent and TiO₂ as photocatalyst, and was introduced into liquid microjunction surface sampling (LMJSS)-MS system as online derivatization. The results showed that the photocatalytic derivatization method largely enhanced the signals of primary amines by 5-300 fold, and were selective to alpha-unsubstituted primary amines. Thus, the suppression effects from high-abundance amino acids to the reaction of monoamine neurotransmitters and benzylamine drugs proved to be largely reduced in the new method (matrix effect>50%) comparing with those in chemical derivatization method (matrix effect<10%). In addition, the optimal pH of the derivatization reaction was measured to be 7, which indicates the mild and physiologically compatible reaction conditions. By in-situ synthesis of TiO₂ monolith in the transfer capillary of the LMJSS-MS system, rapid on-line photocatalytic derivatization was achieved and completed in 5 s during the transfer of sampling extract from the flow-probe to the MS inlet. With the new photocatalytic reactive LMJSS-MS method, detection limits of three primary amines on glass slides were in the range of 0.031-0.17 ng/mm² with acceptable linearity (r=0.9815-0.9998) and relatively high repeatability (relative standard deviations <22.1%). Finally, endogenous tyramine, serotonin, two dipeptides and one doped benzylamine drug were identified and in-situ analyzed in the mouse cerebrum by the new method with largely enhanced signals comparing with LMJSS-MS without online derivatization. The new method provides a more selective, rapid and automated way to analyze alpha-unsubstituted amine metabolites and drugs in-situ comparing with traditional methods.